Songun is the "military-first" policy of North Korea, prioritizing the Korean People's Army in the affairs of state and allocation of resources. "Military-first" as a principle guides political and economic life in North Korea, with "military-first politics" dominating the political system; "a line of military-first economic construction" acting as an economic system; and "military-first ideology" serving as the guiding ideology.
Songun elevates the Korean People's Army within North Korea as an organization and as a state function, granting it the primary position in the North Korean government and society. It guides domestic policy and international interactions. It is the framework for the government, designating the military as the "supreme repository of power". The government grants the Korean People's Army the highest economic and resource-allocation priority and positions it as the model for society to emulate. Songun is also the ideological concept behind a shift in policies since 1994 which emphasize the people's military over all other aspects of state and society.
History
The roots of can be traced back to Kim Il Sung's guerilla activities against the Japanese during the 1930s. During this time, Kim Il Sung came to believe that a nation's independence, sovereignty, and prosperity were dependent on the existence of an organized and well-armed fighting force.
The "four military lines" () policy implemented by Kim Il Sung in 1962 was a precursor to . The policy aimed to arm the entire population, fortify the state, educate every soldier to become a party cadre, and modernize the military.
did not appear as an official government policy until after Kim Il-sung's death in 1994. In the wake of his first visit to a military unit in 1995, Kim Jong Il, the son of Kim Il Sung, introduced as "a revolutionary idea of attaching great importance to the army" and "a politics emphasizing the perfect unity and the single-hearted unity of the party, army and the people, and the role of the army as the vanguards". This was a shift from the government's previous guiding policy, Kim Il Sung's . According to the North Korean government, Kim Jong Il's inspiration for came from a visit with his father to the Seoul 105th Guards Armored Division headquarters in Pyongyang on 25 August 1960. 25 August is now a national holiday, the Day of Songun.
A 1997 editorial published in Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the Workers' Party of Korea, stated, "Never before have the status and role of the People's Army been so extraordinarily elevated as today when it is being led energetically by the Respected and Beloved Comrade Supreme Commander". By this point, the Korean People's Army had also become "synonymous with the people, the state, and the party".
In 1998, began appearing in conjunction with other terms, including "military-first revolutionary idea", "military-first revolutionary leadership" and "military-first politics", expanding the concept of into even more aspects of North Korean governance.
became an even more prominent concept in January 1999, making its first appearance in the important New Year's Day editorial published jointly by all the major news organs of North Korea. The editorial tied with Kim Jong Il by declaring that he practiced military-first leadership, which is "one in which the People's Army serves as the main force of revolution and in which the unity of the army and the people helps to safeguard as well as build socialism". In foreign language publications, the translated term "army-first" substituted for between 1999 and 2006, after which the Korean term has been used exclusively.
In January 2003, the New Year's editorial added military-first ideology () to the pantheon of military-first concepts. In December 2003, the "Essential Attributes of Military-First Politics" was published as a new vision of the driving force of the revolution in the quasi-communist North Korea. It assigned the main force of the revolution to the Korean People's Army. This is a role that in communist states is traditionally assigned to the proletariat, or in China to the peasantry. However, for North Korea "only the army meets the criteria of loyalty, revolutionary spirit, cohesiveness, and ". January 2004 saw another increase in the reach of as it was mentioned more frequently than any other word in the New Year's editorial and was used to describe everything from politics to Korea itself.