Pokpung-ho

Composite Armour. ERA plates optional.

The P'okp'ung-ho or spelled Pokpung-ho (Chosŏn'gŭl: 폭풍호; Hanja: 暴風號) is a North Korean main battle tank (MBT) developed in the 1990s. The tank may incorporate technology found in the T-62, T-72, Type 88 and Ch'onma-ho MBTs. Outside parties codename the tank M-2002 because the tank went through performance trials on February 16, 2002 (therefore being officially confirmed by outside sources), although the tank may have been in existence since 1992.

The P'okp'ung-ho is only known to be used in North Korea.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a significant number of T-72s were decommissioned from Soviet service and scrapped for metal. North Korea acquired some of these scrapped T-72s and obtained core technology for use on the P'okp'ung-ho through reverse engineering. North Korea's interest in the T-90 was demonstrated in August 2001 when Kim Jong-il visited the Omsk Transmash defense plant which builds the T-90 during his visit to Russia. However North Korea failed to acquire T-90 since then, as South Korean and Russian governments agreed to cease supplying arms technology since 1994.

What initiated the need to develop a new tank was likely the poor combat performance the export variants of T-72 displayed during the Gulf War. Shocked at the destruction of Iraqi T-72s by western tanks such as the M1 Abrams, compounded with the fact that South Korea operates the K1 MBT, which has similar performance to the early models of the American M1 Abrams MBT, North Korea decided to significantly modernize its tank fleet to bridge the performance gap between its Ch'onma-ho MBTs and the South Korean K1 MBTs. However, economic struggles and a lack of several core technologies seem to have prevented North Korea from achieving high production numbers for the P'okp'ung-ho before the late 2000s.