The Korean People's Army (KPA) is the military of North Korea. Kim Jong-il is the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and Chairman of the National Defence Commission. The army has five branches: the Army Ground Force, the Navy, the Air Force, the Artillery Guidance Bureau, and the Special Operation Force.

Annual military expenditure is US$6 billion across the armed forces including expenditure on missiles. US research organization ISIS reports DPRK may have enough fissible material for 2-9 nuclear weapons. Songun, the DPRK's "Military First" policy, elevates the Korean People's Army within the DPRK as an organization and as a state function, granting it the primary position in the DPRK government and society and identifying it as the basis of the revolution, a role belonging to the proletariat in classical Marxist theory.

In 1978, Kim Il-sung directed that "Military Foundation Day" be changed from 8 February to 25 April — the nominal day of establishment of his anti-Japanese guerilla army in 1932 — to glorify the supposedly indigenous Korean origins of the KPA and obscure its Soviet origin. An active arms industry had been developed to produce long-range missiles such as the Nodong-1.

North Korea is the most militarized country in the world today, having the fifth largest standing army in the world, at an estimated 1.1 million armed personnel, with about 20% of men ages 17–54 in the regular armed forces. It also has the Worker-Peasant Red Guard, a reserve force comprising 3.5m+ (IISS), 3.8m (USMC) or 4.7m (State Department) militia. It operates an enormous network of military facilities scattered around the country, a large weapons production basis, and an extremely dense air defence system.

The KPA faces the Military of South Korea and United States Forces Korea across the Korean Demilitarized Zone, as it has since the ceasefire of 1953.