Ukraine war: What is extent of North Korea's involvement?

North Korea is not only supplying Moscow with weapons but is also sending military personnel to the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on October 17 in Brussels after meeting European leaders and NATO defense ministers. He said that Pyongyang was preparing to send as many as 10,000 soldiers.

On October 8, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun had already said in parliament that North Korea might support Russia's war in Ukraine by sending troops.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly warned against an alliance between North Korea and Russia, saying that relations between Ukraine and its allies must be strengthened to prevent a "major war."

North Korean ammunition and troops

Sabrina Singh, deputy spokesperson for the US Defense Ministry, suggested in July there was no indication that North Korean troops were being sent to Ukraine. But in 2023, Ukraine's military intelligence service (HUR) reported that a North Korean contingent had arrived in the occupied territories of the country.

Andriy Kovalenko from the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine reported at the beginning of October that North Korean military personnel were supervising ammunition provided to Russia in the Russian-occupied parts of the Donetsk region. He added that they were accompanying deliveries and monitoring the Russian army's use of ammunition.

According to the Ukrainian media, there have even been North Korean casualties. More than 20 military personnel, including six officers from North Korea, are reported to have been killed by a Ukrainian missile attack near Donetsk on October 3.

An anonymous HUR representative recently told Ukrainian media that the Russian army had acquired a "special Buryat battalion" that also comprised North Koreans. The Buryats are a Mongolic ethnic group native to southeastern Siberia. The HUR representative said that 18 North Korean soldiers had deserted positions in Bryansk and Kursk, both Russian regions on the border with Ukraine.

There is, however, no confirmed information about the number of North Korean troops in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

No confirmation of North Korean involvement from Moscow

Russia has not yet confirmed that North Korea is participating in the war against Ukraine. With regard to Russia and North Korea, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said merely that there "truly strategic deep cooperation in all areas, including security," referring to a defense pact signed between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2024, which provides for mutual military assistance.

Pro-Kremlin bloggers have reported on deliveries of ammunition from North Korea and Iran to the Russian army, posting photos from the front. Some have even criticized the poor quality of the weapons.

DW was unable to find any evidence on Russian social media networks that North Korean soldiers had been deployed to Russia or Russian-occupied Ukraine. Posts that claimed to provide proof of North Korean troops' involvement in the war in Ukraine were dubious at best. An appeal to Kim Jong Un that was posted in a Russian-language Telegram chat was written in Korean and signed with the name of the commander of the first motorized rifle brigade of the Korean People's Army. In it, the military man allegedly asks not to be sent to Kursk so as not to fight "against NATO," adding: "We are afraid, it's terrible." Ukrainian troops advanced into this Russian region in August.

Fyodor Tertitsky, a North Korea analyst based in South Korea, said that the appeal was fake. He said that apart from the fact that a military man would not admit that he was afraid to his superiors, it contained telling errors. For example, it used South Korean spelling and did not use the correct form to address the North Korean leader. Though he was described as "respected," he explained, "according to the rules he must also be referred to as beloved leader," and failure to do so would result in being taken to court.

Mutual temporary benefits for Russia and North Korea

Andrei Lankov, a professor of history and international relations at Kookmin University in the South Korean capital Seoul, said that it was "quite plausible" that North Korean troops would be sent to take part in Russia's war against Ukraine. He told DW that it would make sense for Putin to strengthen the Russian army with North Koreans as it would allow him to avoid another mobilization campaign in Russia.

"If you look at it from the Russian point of view, Putin is fighting a war that is generally popular in Russia, but only on the one condition that the majority of the population is kept out of the fighting and is not 'disturbed' from its day-to-day life by the war," he explained.

Lankov, who is originally from Russia but who has been an academic in South Korea for 30 years, said there were fewer and fewer men who were prepared to put their lives on the line, not even for the generous financial advantages that signing up with the army offered. He said what the Russian army most needed now was infantry units.

He explained that in return North Korea wanted money first and foremost. "Right now, a private in the Russian military gets $2,000 (ca. €1,840) a month plus a signing-on bonus that can be as much as $20,000. If North Korea gets half of that figure for every soldier it provides, then Pyongyang will be very happy."

The second reason for Pyongyang's willingness to provide troops is Russia's offer to pay part of the bill in the form of technology, hinting that North Korea has driven a hard bargain on this point. "Money alone is not enough," Lankov said. "Some will have to come in the form of the advanced technology that the North wants but has not been able to get. Normally, Russia would never agree to provide this sort of technology to a country as unstable as the North, but they have no choice."

The final reason for North Korea's desire to have troops in the front line in Ukraine is the skills and knowledge it will provide in a real-world scenario, Lankov suggested.

"This is a modern conflict between two advanced military powers over a lengthy period of time," he said. "The world has not seen a conflict like this for 80 years and North Korea wants to obtain experience in fighting this sort of war."

While the loan of potentially thousands of North Korean troops suggests a new level of military cooperation between the two allies, Lankov expected the exchanges to be brief.

"It will elevate relations to a new level, but only for a certain period of time," he said. "Once the hostilities are over in Ukraine, everything will go back to where it was before and it will be business as usual. These two countries are very different and largely incompatible, so there will be very little that North Korea produces that Russia wants."

In June 2024, the South Korean broadcaster TV Chosun cited a source in the South Korean government and reported that North Korean troops were being deployed to support the Russian army. It suggested that three or four engineer brigades might be transferred from North Korea to Russia. Andrei Gubin, from the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote in 2020 that this kind of troops are extremely effective due to their strict discipline and high quality of work. In his study, he pointed out that the Korean People's Army was structured in such a way that it was capable of "echelon defense."

North Korea has already sent troops to support other armies

North Korea has sent troops overseas before. Angola, for example, accepted around 3,000 military "advisers” in the 1970s and 1980s. These troops were tasked with training local troops but also fought against South African forces.

North Korean troops also sent troops to Uganda, Chad and Mozambique, and also trained guerillas of the South-West African Liberation Army to carry out a long-running insurgency against the South African government until the end of apartheid.

Generally, North Korea has tended to send trainers, said Tertitsky, explaining that North Korean soldiers rarely took part in military operations outside their country. Another exception that he highlighted was the deployment of pilots to support the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.

However, he explained that the South Korean defense minister's statement lent credibility to the scenario that North Korean troops might be deployed to take part in Russia's war against Ukraine and he was forced to take it "seriously."

This article was originally published in Russian.