ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that the Korean People’s Army’s building process was a part of national modernization project (Sovietization) in the socio-cultural context. This chapter examines how the building of the North Korean state was not a top-down government initiative, but an interactive process between government initiatives and many North Korean people, who received benefits from it and supported it. The new North Korean regime needed a new elite who were highly loyal and educated, and provided career opportunities to young people from poor, working and peasant classes. Later, they and their family members became upper-middle and middle class of North Korean society.
