Korean People's Army Special Operations Forces
special operations branch of North Korea's military
The Korean People's Army Special Operations Forces (KPASOF; Korean: 조선인민군 특수작전군; Hanja: 朝鮮人民軍 特殊作戰軍; Chosŏn inmin'gun t'ŭksu chakchŏn'gun) are the special operations forces of Korean People's Army.
History
North Korean special operations forces existed by late-1968 when maritime commandos made the unsuccessful Uljin–Samcheok Landings against South Korea.
A new special operations unit wearing what appeared to be modern combat gear appeared in the Day of the Sun military parade on 15 April 2017. According to North Korean state media, the new unit, the Lightning Commandos, was intended to counter the U.S. Navy SEALs and Republic of Korea Navy Special Warfare Flotilla.
On July 27, 2023, soldiers from the 41st Amphibious Assault Battalion marched during a military parade.
Elements of the KPASOF have been deployed to Russia as a part of the North Korean involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine from October 2024.
Mission
The missions of the KPA Special Operations Forces are to breach the fixed defense of South Korea, to create a "second front" in the enemy's rear area, and to conduct battlefield and strategic reconnaissance. These would sometimes be done while disguised as South Korean soldiers.
The KPA SOF performs military, political, and psychological operations.
According to the Yonhap News Agency, the KPA SOF also counters American and South Korean attempts to end Kim Jong-Un's rule.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Korean People's Army Special Operations Forces” as special operations branch of North Korea's military. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as special operations branch of North Korea's military. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4419317. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1968, 2017, 2023 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Korean People's Army Special Operations Forces” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.