Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Korean People's Army was formally announced on the 8th of February 1948, the day after the Fourth Plenary Session of the People's Assembly approved separating military and police roles. From 1978 onward, North Korea also recognized the 25th of April 1932 as an alternate founding date, tied to Kim Il Sung's anti-Japanese guerrilla activities in Manchuria, though by 2019 the official founding date had reverted to the 8th of February 1948.
The Korean People's Army is the second largest military organisation in the world. Its Special Operation Force alone numbers 200,000 troops, and the paramilitary Worker-Peasant Red Guards are estimated at 5 million personnel. North Korea conscripts males for 10 years and females up to the age of 23.
North Korea conducted its first nuclear test on the 9th of October 2006 and claimed a hydrogen bomb detonation on the 3rd of September 2017 at the Punggye-ri site, which South Korean officials assessed at 50 kilotons of yield. Estimates of the total stockpile range from twenty to sixty assembled nuclear weapons, and in July 2017 North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile analysts estimated capable of reaching mainland U.S. territory at a range of 10,400 km.
In the fall of 2024, approximately 10,000 KPA troops, including Special Operations Forces, were covertly deployed to Russia to fight alongside Russian forces in the Kursk offensive. They operated in Russian uniforms under Russian command. Both Russia and North Korea initially denied the deployment; it became publicly acknowledged after Russia announced it had driven the last Ukrainian forces from Kursk Oblast.
The KPA captured Seoul in the opening phase of the Korean War in 1950, but lost 70,000 of its 100,000-strong force in the autumn following U.S. amphibious landings at the Battle of Incheon. By the 1953 Armistice, the KPA had sustained 290,000 casualties and lost 90,000 men as prisoners of war, after which it played a secondary role to Chinese forces for the remainder of the conflict.
More than 5,000 foreign personnel have been trained inside North Korea, and over 7,000 military advisers have been sent to some forty-seven countries. Recipients of North Korean military assistance have included the Palestine Liberation Organization, Zimbabwe's Fifth Brigade, and Hezbollah, which received guerrilla warfare training around 2004. Up to 200 KPA Air Force pilots flew combat missions during the Vietnam War, scoring kills against U.S. aircraft.