Year of ‘Great Life-and-Death Struggle’: What Happened on the Korean Peninsula in 2022

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea’s official name) started off 2022 with a bang, literally, testing a hypersonic missile in mid-January. The missile was said to have flown over 700 km across the Sea of Japan before striking its target.

Kim warned at the very start of the year that 2022 would be difficult, filled with rural development, industrialization, and socio-economic reforms, as well as a “great life-and-death struggle” to improve living standards and defend the country against foreign incursion.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula began escalating toward the end of the Trump presidency in late 2020, with the Biden administration failing throughout 2021 to establish a rapport and businesslike approach to either Kim personally or North Korea as a whole. 2022 was the year of presidential elections in South Korea (officially the Republic of Korea, or ROK). Pyongyang’s worst fears about the vote came true in March, with opposition party People Power candidate Yoon Suk-yeol claiming victory and stepping into office in May. With that, the unprecedented rapprochement in inter-Korean ties enjoyed under Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea, came to an end, and the region braced for a new deep freeze of tensions.

2022 witnessed a record number of missile tests by North Korea, with the tests, often timed to coincide with US-South Korean drills, including everything from tactical and short-range projectiles, to medium, intermediate, and long-range missiles, rail and sub-launched weapons, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching any point in the continental United States. The DPRK fired more missiles in 2022 than in any previous year, with the estimated 44 total launches recorded by the Nuclear Threat Initiative accounting for over one fifth of all the missiles Pyongyang has ever launched since the mid-1980s, when tests began.

To prove it meant business on its missile prowess, the DPRK dropped a jaw-dropping music video-style clip in late March featuring the Hwasong-17 ICBM, complete with a slow motion, leather-clad Kim wearing cool shades, complex aerial shots of the launch, including a camera mounted directly on board the missile, and an epic moment in which Kim looks at his watch, takes off his sunglasses, and nods, as if to signal "it’s time to start the test."

2022 was also the year that North Korea reported its first COVID cases. While the country held out against the global pandemic for over a year-and-a-half with no cases recorded, the virus finally seeped into the DPRK from China, and quickly spread like wildfire, infecting over 820,000 people in a matter of weeks, and over 4.7 million by August. Fortunately, the reduced deadliness of the Omicron variant, combined with the DPRK’s highly militarized, clockwork medical system, has kept casualties low, with Pyongyang reporting just a few dozen deaths from the virus. Neighboring South Korea, one of the first nations to be hit by COVID, had confirmed over 28 million cases, and 31,500+ deaths, by that time.

The outgoing year was the one where the DPRK, suspected of having nuclear weapons technology since 2006, officially declared itself a nuclear weapons power. The nation’s nuclear doctrine, announced in September, characterizes nuclear weapons as a “powerful means for defending the sovereignty, territorial integrity and fundamental interests of the state,” and a guarantee for the “the strategic stability of the world.” Pyongyang restricts itself from deploying nuclear weapons in any other country, prohibits the sharing of nuclear technology, and allows for the world-ending armaments to be used only in the event of an enemy nuclear or “fatal” conventional attack.

In November, Kim specified that the purpose of North Korea’s nukes is to “reliably protect the dignity and sovereignty of the state and the people through all ages,” and outlined Pyongyang’s “ultimate goal” of possessing “the world’s most powerful strategic force, the absolute force unprecedented in this century.”

Along with North Korean missile drills, one of the consequences of the collapse of the inter-Korean dialogue and the escalation of tensions between Pyongyang and Washington has been a dramatic escalation in military drills on the peninsula, including on the border with North Korea, by the US and its allies. 2022 included massive fighter and bomber drills in October – the largest of their kind ever staged, joint anti-submarine drills with Japan – North Korea’s arch enemy going back to its brutal occupation of Korea from 1910-1945, ground-based exercises, and a massive combined arms drill involving tens of thousands of troops, tanks, warships, and aircraft known as "Ulchi Freedom Shield" held between August and September.

2022 saw North Korea wade confidently into the central international crisis of the year – the Ukraine conflict. Pyongyang recognized the Donbass republics’ independence from Ukraine in July, prompting Kiev to cut off relations in a very undiplomatic diplomatic statement filled with venom and bile.

Pyongyang also spit some venom of its own this year. Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister and the deputy director of the information department of the governing Worker’s Party of Korea’s Central Committee, blasted South Korea’s leaders as “shameless fools” and “stooges” acting like “a stray dog gnawing at a bone given by the United States” in November after Seoul announced possible sanctions against the DPRK.

With the collapse of inter-Korean dialogue, 2022 saw Seoul officially slap its neighbor with an “enemy” label in a defense white paper, reversing course on President Moon’s 2019 decision to officially scrap the designation.

The outgoing year wasn’t all politics, missile launches, military drills, and geostrategy. In June, South Korean engineers successfully launched the Nuri space rocket, endowing the ROK with the ability to independently place satellites into orbit. In August, the country followed up the success with the launch of its Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter. The orbiter successfully entered the Moon’s orbit on Wednesday.

On November 28, President Yoon announced the creation of the Korea Aerospace Agency to manage space affairs, with the agency set to officially start operations in the second half of 2023. Seoul’s space program has ambitious goals, including a spacecraft landing on the Moon in five years’ time, mining resources on the Earth's satellite by 2032, and planting the national flag on Mars by 2045.

In the meantime, Pyongyang, which has its own fledgling peaceful space industry and satellite program, is nevertheless focusing on ambitions closer to home. On Wednesday, Kim Jong-un said that in the coming year, the DPRK’s top priorities will be to continue the “struggle against the enemy” and “defend the national sovereignty and interests” of his country amid growing hostility from Seoul and Washington.