Korean People's Army

**Dev. Status** | Conceptual

"*The country established by the will of the people,*

*Breasting the raging waves with soaring strength.*

*Glorifying forever this Korea, limitlessly rich and strong,*

*Let the Way be shone.*"

- "Aegukka"
The Korean People's Army is North Korea's militia force. The KPA uses masses of conscripts and walkers to traverse uphill terrain and overwhelm the enemy, equipped with cutting-edge technology with the hope that they can disable an enemy's advantages.

## Background

### Comraderie

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was born in fire. At the time, Korea was united under the Joseon Emperor, who had made his nation into an effective vassal of the Empire of the Rising Sun, unable to draw away from Japa's orbit. With his corrupt rule, the people struggled as the upper class lived in luxury while the lower class of Korea lived in poverty and the middle class of Korea was constantly squeezed dry by its wealthiest members. Officials from Western or Eastern powers would come and boss people around, living like a miniaturized version of the policies in the terminal phase of Imperial China, above the laws of Korea and with all the supposed wealth of their investments seeming to disappear into rich pockets.

This state of affairs, of course, bred people demanding a change like hungry dogs demanding juicy steaks. Kim Il-Sung came to rise and instated a long-running communist insurgency against the Empire, demanding that the lower and middle classes rise against those who would oppress and loot them. He said that the world revolution which began in the Soviet Union must also spread to Korea and from there, to Asia, then all over the world. People listened to him, and they began a guerrilla war against the Imperial government, a long and arduous struggle of resistance with both peaceful and violent means. But revolution is never easy, and it was difficult to get it going when the enemy had tanks and airplanes, no matter how primitive.

### Holding Bayonets More Firmly

Stalin launched his East Asian operations to reverse the fortunes of the Communist insurgencies in Asia. Soviet troops from the nation with the world's highest GDP and a population now only scarcely behind the former British Raj and China poured in. Though at first his focus was on China, Stalin turned to Korea in due time. With the starving, incompetent, and poorly equipped KMT armies in total collapse, he freed up a million troops to pour into the peninsula. Against him, the Joseon could do nothing. Their aging tanks from the '20s could not penetrate even the rear armor of a Sohka, never mind an Anvil. Soviet jets annihilated the small air force of the Empire of Korea, and the Red Navy barely registered that of the Joseon as a speed bump.

As MCVs set about building up Korean industry, the Soviets prepared to launch their final assault at a tiny stretch of beach where the last of the Empire of Korea's forces were going to make a stand. Then, the Japanese came. Already wanting to intervene in Korea to protect their interests, the Empire of the Rising Sun realized that it could gain a great number of concessions from the Allies for intervening. The price the Empire asked for its intervention was enormous: a huge sum of money, portions of Alaska including the Aleutian Islands, America's island territories such as Hawaii, a number of humiliating demands from the ROC, and recognition of the Empire's exclusive sphere of influence in Korea. The purpose of this plan was to essentially force the nation that Yoshiro saw as the true threat to his future ambitions, America, essentially concede the Pacific to his nation.

### Onwards Toward the Final Victory

Japanese intervention is what rescued the Joseon dynasty as well as the Republic of China from complete collapse. Soviet forces, which were preparing to move back to other fronts, were caught unprepared and off-guard by the Empire's sudden strikes and were thrown back over the Yalu River. Afterwards, the reds were already looking to properly annex Korea while Japanese soldiers played havoc in Siberia and the Chinese interior. Then came the Chinese from Manchuria, millions of them, followed by returning Soviet forces and the DPRK's most violent insurgency yet. Japanese forces retreated in disarray to the 38th parallel, where the Communist forces fought them to a standstill after they regrouped. Eventually recognizing that no one was going to get anywhere within this contest, a peace treaty was signed, dividing Korea into North and South. The North would become a prosperous, industrialized state, while the South resumed most of its prior policies, just with the Empire being its sole backer.

Now that a period of peace had begun, North Korea settled into a time focusing primarily on economic development, with Kim Il-Sung analyzing the programs of Stalin and Mao and making his own revisions. He agreed with the need to industrialize rapidly, but disagreed with the belief that heavy industry was the primary focus of communist economic reform, using the lessons from the mistakes made in past collectivization attempts to properly build up agriculture. This resulted in a state of red plenty that was held as a model for the rest of the socialist world. In one instance, tall and fit North Korean soldiers taunt their Southern counterparts by eating large and tasty meals in front of them at the DMZ. Red China would come to heavily rely on North Korea for aid and the latter would experience a population boom from its large surplus of food, further expanding its economy. Then, during World War III, North Korea had a further boom in its wealth. Coupled with a Soviet Union desperate to shore up communist leaders worldwide, Kim Il-Sung quickly allowed rubles to flow into the country, supporting the PRC to the north, giving aid to insurgents in Vietnam, and continually acting as a focal point of Imperial attention in Korea as the back-and-forth slugfest of a second war resumed with the Japanese-backed south.

### The Hermit Kingdom

When the atomic bombs dropped, the North Koreans realized that they needed to desperately seal themselves away. The world had gotten far stranger, more dangerous. They became a hermit kingdom, toiling away in secret and letting few foreigners into the country. Soviet visitors reported that the North Koreans were wholeheartedly communist, and that the economy was strong, but something was wrong. North Korea was somehow communist, and not communist, instead forming what could only be described as a cult around the Kim family. In the months following the atomic holocaust, only North Korea’s special forces were even tentatively allowed to venture into the radioactive hell that was China. But as reports from the outside trickled back in through contact with Soviet forces and Chinese survivors, North Korea has realized that it needs to start pushing outside, unsealing itself for the first time in months and tentatively re-allowing visitors. For this, though, the DPRK has decided to push through a theater of warfare uncommon to everyone else in the world: mountains.

As the two Koreas are both mostly situated on high-altitude terrain (mountains constitute 80% the North's landmass and 70% of the South's), the North Korean military has begun to restructure its equipment and forces with the goal of traversing the numerous mountain ranges of the peninsula. Claimed to be "Italy's Alpine Corps on steroids" by Allied analysts, the Korean People's Army's Mountaineering Corps is becoming less and less the faceless mass of soldiers and tanks the Allied media has stereotyped them to be. This means that the EoK penal soldiers will have to face a faceless mass of infantry and walkers as well as its legendary, faceless special forces. And even the North Koreans think that those aren't enough, evidenced by worrying reports of their stockpiled ballistic missiles, coordinates of their targets already being plotted and just waiting for the command to fire.

## Them, Glorious Mountaineers

*"...a new year has arrived for The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and we are still at war with the Japanese imperialists who have brainwashed our brothers in the South. While their capitalist armies have been corrupted by using their own lawbreakers as their cannon fodder, our Glorious Leader has ensured that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea will remain as the brightest shining light of socialism and progress in the world. Thus, our Glorious Mountaineers shall scale the hills of Korea to incinerate those imperialists in a blaze of righteousness ahead of our peerless standard divisions, our matchless airborne divisions, our fearless marines, and our dauntless commando corps. In righteousness, there is war. In war, there is security. And in security, there is liberty."*

- North Korean propaganda reel, played in theaters nationwide every New Year's day, as recorded by a visiting KGB agent.

### Deathmatch Reinforcements

**2nd Artillery Corps**

Built around escorting and safekeeping a Nodong Rocket Launcher, these units of the KPA 2nd Artillery Corps can not only provide extreme long range fire support but also vital services such as vehicular transport and air defense to the mountaineers.

## Behind the Scenes

The KPA take inspiration from the faceless nameless mooks of fiction, from the hordes of German soldiers mowed down in World War II movies to the dozens of SPECTRE mooks killed by James Bond. They also draw a little from Red Alert 2 for the design of their walkers (the discarded concepts anyway) and for the Irradiator as well as for the uniforms of their other infantry which should generally be reminiscent of the RA2's faceless conscript and flak trooper.