North Korea’s Nuclear-Cognitive Warfare Strategy

The inauguration of President Trump’s second term has given rise to much speculation about the prospects of reengagement between the United States and North Korea. However, even if dialogue resumes between the two countries as Trump hopes, it is unlikely to lead to substantial progress on denuclearization. Instead, Kim Jong Un is more likely to try to secure a dominant position on the Korean Peninsula, with few concessions on the nuclear front in the process.

South Korea (Republic of Korea or ROK) has thus far focused on North Korean nuclear threats, and for good reason. North Korea has continuously advanced its nuclear technology through nuclear tests and missile launches, enacted the new “Policy on the Nuclear Forces” in September 2022, and conducted operational training for nuclear units. This helped the country establish military readiness and pursue a relative military advantage on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea’s intent appears to be to leverage the nuclear imbalance between the two Koreas to coerce the ROK-US alliance in various scenarios, from peacetime to wartime, to achieve its goals. The South Korean and US authorities have assessed North Korea’s above-cited actions as being aligned with its longer-term nuclear development roadmap or as part of a strategy to gain short-term leverage.

It is unlikely, however, that North Korea’s nuclear coercion will be limited to extracting short-term, direct, and limited concessions. As the cognitive domain emerges as a new battlefield, North Korea may actively employ its nuclear weapons in cognitive warfare. The aim would be to induce errors and distortions in the cognitive processes of decision-makers in South Korea and the United States, focusing on generating decisions and actions favorable to North Korea’s strategy. Pyongyang could reap long-term and comprehensive benefits by going beyond using nuclear weapons as a tool of military coercion and integrating psychological, information, and cyber warfare.

This article explores North Korea’s evolving strategy of nuclear-cognitive warfare, which combines traditional nuclear coercion with the manipulation of cognitive processes to influence decision-making. It explains how North Korea uses nuclear threats and non-kinetic warfare to distort perceptions and undermine the decision-making frameworks of South Korea and the United States. By targeting key groups—such as the general public, the ROK-US alliance, and nuclear decision-makers—North Korea aims to create fear, disrupt alliances, and paralyze nuclear decision-making processes. North Korea’s nuclear-cognitive warfare presents strategic dilemmas for the alliance and poses significant challenges to the efforts of Seoul and Washington to deter and respond to North Korea’s nuclear threats. The alliance must now prepare for this evolved form of nuclear coercion, going beyond simply deterring and countering the North’s nuclear coercion.

Nuclear-Cognitive Warfare

In essence, nuclear coercion and cognitive warfare are not entirely separate. Both nuclear coercion and nuclear-cognitive warfare are strategic concepts that leverage nuclear weapons to alter the adversary’s perception. However, nuclear coercion aims to compel or deter an adversary’s actions by using or suggesting the possibility of using nuclear weapons. This involves threats of nuclear use, heightened readiness, and the creation of fear as key methods and tools. Pyongyang’s nuclear tests and missile launches, intended for political messaging to the international community, are part of its nuclear coercion strategy.

On the other hand, nuclear-cognitive warfare involves manipulating or distorting perceptions of nuclear weapons to disrupt adversaries’ judgment, decision-making, and response strategies. It aims to secure strategic advantage by disturbing the adversary’s decision-making framework and rational judgment. Forms of cognitive warfare attacks, such as information manipulation, narrative control, and decision interference, are directly applicable to this strategy, with nuclear weapons being a primary target and tool.

Nuclear-cognitive warfare signifies the integration of nuclear weapons and cognitive warfare. The union of nuclear weapons, which demonstrate immense physical destructive power, and the cognitive domain represents a sophisticated and powerful form of hybrid warfare. While nuclear coercion is a basic form of cognitive warfare that uses the threat of nuclear weapons to deter or compel an adversary’s action, from the perspective of cognitive warfare, nuclear weapons are the most effective means of crafting messaging that shapes perceptions.

In this context, nuclear-cognitive warfare may take place in four stages:

• Existential nuclear coercion: This stage relies on the destructive power of nuclear weapons to achieve existential coercion. Merely possessing nuclear weapons deters rash physical attacks, representing the foundational level of nuclear-cognitive warfare.
• Nuclear narratives: An actor develops sophisticated messaging related to nuclear weapons to access the cognitive domain, with advanced cyber technologies playing a critical role.
• Integration into multi-domain operations: Nuclear-cognitive warfare becomes a core element of hybrid warfare at this stage, linking and integrating physical and non-physical operations.
• Operations within the cognitive domain: The focus shifts to conducting military operations within the cognitive domain, with nuclear weapons serving as enablers or facilitators of effective cognitive warfare.

Although this classification is somewhat broad, several key features emerge. First, the focus shifts from the physical to the non-physical domain. The emphasis transitions from leveraging the destructive power of nuclear weapons to alter physical military behavior to gaining access to the cognitive domain and conducting military operations within it. Second, there is an evolution from propaganda to influence operations. Initially, specific messaging based on nuclear threats is developed; later, this evolves to dominate the adversary’s cognitive territory. Third, achieving narrative superiority requires increasingly sophisticated and advanced planning, with higher stages necessitating enhanced command, control, integration, and coordination.

North Korea’s Strategy for Nuclear-Cognitive Warfare

Nuclear-cognitive warfare is likely to become one of the most effective military tools in North Korea’s future strategy against South Korea. North Korea is expected to enhance its nuclear-cognitive warfare capabilities to instill fear, despair, and helplessness among the South Korean public, disrupt and dismantle military command structures, and undermine the cohesion of the ROK-US alliance. To achieve these goals, North Korea will likely develop more sophisticated doctrines for nuclear-cognitive warfare.

Objectives and Concepts of Nuclear-Cognitive Warfare

Nuclear-cognitive warfare is expected to evolve by combining the characteristics of cognitive warfare with conventional nuclear coercion. North Korea’s likely goal in nuclear-cognitive warfare appears to be to influence the ROK-US decision-making system to delay, disrupt, or disable decision-making, thereby compelling the acceptance of North Korea’s demands. Target groups may include decision-making entities involved in nuclear policy, governments, and militaries forming the ROK-US alliance, and the general populace in South Korea and the United States.

The means of nuclear-cognitive warfare extend beyond physical tools of nuclear coercion to include non-physical means such as cyber warfare, information warfare, and psychological operations. The intensification of non-physical means, including the manipulation of human cognitive biases, distinguishes nuclear-cognitive warfare from traditional nuclear coercion. An advanced form of nuclear coercion, nuclear-cognitive warfare involves leveraging non-physical tools to create distortion and errors in adversary cognition. Given North Korea’s prior use of traditional media, social networks, and other tools for cyber-psychological operations against the international community, it is plausible that new scientific and technological tools will also be employed. In particular, rapidly advancing artificial intelligence technologies, such as generative AI platforms and troll bots, could become integral to nuclear-cognitive warfare.

Capabilities Required for Nuclear-Cognitive Warfare

Nuclear-cognitive warfare is a form of cognitive warfare that only states possessing nuclear weapons can conduct. Therefore, a state’s development and capabilities of nuclear weapons are of primary importance for conducting nuclear-cognitive warfare. Additionally, ensuring the survivability of nuclear forces and maintaining second-strike capability are critical. Beyond nuclear hardware, the cyber domain is a significant avenue for accessing adversarial cognition. As such, cyber warfare capabilities must be assessed as a core component of nuclear-cognitive warfare. Finally, specialized organizations that focus on propaganda and messaging — in North Korea’s case that would be the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers Party of Korea Central Committee — will play a crucial role in developing sophisticated narratives.

Three Strategic Approaches

According to the operational concepts of nuclear-cognitive warfare, North Korea’s strategic approaches to nuclear-cognitive warfare may be divided along the lines of three main target groups.

1. Inducing Fear and Anxiety Among the General Public

In this scenario, North Korea would aim to ensure that its nuclear threats are perceived as credible by South Korea and the United States. To achieve this, it would seek to instill fear and anxiety by manipulating public perceptions of its nuclear capabilities, intent to use them, and scenarios in which they may be employed. Pyongyang often fabricates or exaggerates its nuclear capabilities (nuclear bluffing) and overstates its resolve to use them against its adversaries. Once the public is exposed to false information, cognitive biases, such as the “anchoring effect,” can cause initial impressions to persist, and it may take time to correct those misperceptions.

Given the sensitivity of nuclear issues, certain information may not be shared even between the United States and South Korea, which North Korea can exploit to manipulate public sentiment. By heightening public anxiety, North Korea will aim to foster anti-government, anti-US, and anti-war sentiment. It could significantly amplify the effects of nuclear-cognitive warfare by targeting influential organizations, institutions, or individuals. Such actions combine conventional nuclear coercion with rudimentary nuclear-cognitive warfare aimed at reinforcing the credibility of North Korea’s nuclear threats to the general publics of the United States and South Korea.

Several examples illustrate this tactic. North Korea claimed to have dropped a strategic cruise  missile near the waters off Ulsan in November 2022, though South Korea denied this. Similarly, in February 2023, it reported testing four Hwasal-2 strategic cruise missiles. Again, South Korean authorities dismissed these claims as false. In another case, North Korea in March 2022 claimed to have successfully launched a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), but the South Korean Ministry of Defense said it was actually the Hwasong-15. This was apparently a deception intended to confuse the international community. North Korea has also exaggerated its multi-warhead technology, hypersonic technology, and multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV) capabilities, presenting them as more advanced than they really are.

2. Weakening the Cohesion of the ROK-US Alliance

Here, North Korea would be targeting the ROK-US alliance, specifically the governments and militaries. North Korea would seek to exploit vulnerabilities in these two countries’ nuclear policies and strategies to erode mutual trust between the two allies.

Pyongyang’s primary focus would be on the weaknesses of extended deterrence, the cornerstone of ROK-US nuclear cooperation. North Korea would persistently instill doubt in the South Korean government, military, and public about US willingness to use nuclear weapons and its potential rollback of extended deterrence in a contingency. Because extended deterrence depends on mutual trust, North Korea would aim to identify and attack cognitive vulnerabilities related to alliance credibility. For example, in response to the Washington Declaration issued in 2023, Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong dismissed the agreement as a “reckless statement from an old man” while ridiculing South Korea for being grateful to the United States for a “nominal declaration.” Similarly, North Korea’s weekly propaganda journal, Tongil Sinbo, argued that the United States would never risk its homeland or overseas bases for South Korea, likening America’s commitment to a disposable tissue that would be discarded in times of crisis.

Secondly, North Korea is expected to exploit the ambiguities of US nuclear policies. The United States maintains strategic ambiguity regarding its nuclear operations, which can undermine allies’ trust in extended deterrence and its effective implementation. North Korea could disseminate various statements and narratives to foster distrust and discord within the ROK-US alliance using this ambiguity. In a commentary, for example, North Korea asserted that the United States aimed to “turn the whole of South Korea into its biggest nuclear war outpost in the Far East and effectively use it for attaining its strategy for dominating the world,” reflecting its continued efforts to drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States.

3. Disrupting Nuclear Decision-Making Processes

North Korea’s nuclear-cognitive warfare would also seek to disrupt the decision-making processes of the United States and South Korea. This involves a few approaches:

• Spreading disinformation: North Korea uses disinformation and information overload to delay decision-making and create confusion. Disinformation campaigns force Seoul and Washington to verify facts and explain them to the public, consuming resources and time. Additionally, North Korea selectively disseminates favorable information to itself to skew South Korean and US focus, impacting their nuclear decision-making process.
• Creating divergent threat perceptions: North Korea attempts to create discrepancies in South Korean and US threat perceptions. For instance, while Seoul perceives North Korea’s short-range missiles and tactical nuclear weapons as immediate existential threats, the United States prioritizes intercontinental ballistics missiles (ICBMs) and MIRVs, which could target its homeland. North Korea’s actions are designed to ensure the two allies interpret threats differently, weakening their coordinated response.
• Exploiting differences in response strategies: North Korea seeks to highlight the domestic and international political burdens of nuclear use for the United States, such as risks of escalation, civilian casualties, and strategic overreach. These narratives aim to pressure US leaders into hesitating or avoiding direct involvement in Korean Peninsula crises. At the same time, North Korea frames the United States as unreliable, suggesting that South Korea would bear the brunt of North Korean retaliation and thereby fostering doubts in Seoul about alliance solidarity.

Implications for the ROK-US Alliance

North Korea’s nuclear-cognitive warfare presents strategic dilemmas for the ROK-US alliance and poses significant challenges to their efforts to deter and respond to North Korea’s nuclear threats. Beyond simply deterring and countering North Korea’s nuclear coercion, the alliance must now prepare for this evolved form of nuclear coercion by strengthening cognitive resilience and trust within decision-making structures and among the public. It will also be necessary to target North Korea’s cognitive domain.

In particular, the two allies must now make efforts beyond simply verifying and correcting misinformation after the fact. Instead, they must focus on identifying, protecting, and strengthening the basic targets of nuclear-cognitive warfare. Enhancing the credibility and effectiveness of extended deterrence, which serves as the cornerstone of the ROK-US alliance’s response to North Korea’s nuclear threats, remains one of the most fundamental countermeasures to nuclear-cognitive warfare.

The two allies’ efforts to strengthen US extended deterrence following the 2023 Washington Declaration and the establishment of the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) are particularly significant in this context. These initiatives aim to overcome the inherent limitations of extended deterrence by enhancing information sharing, joint consultations, planning, and execution, thereby reinforcing mutual trust across all domains. In scenarios involving nuclear-cognitive warfare, alliance cohesion and trust will be particularly decisive.