- North Korea got a good deal by sending its officials to help Russia’s Ukraine war, experts said.
- It doesn’t just bring a payment lifeline — it gets access to vital combat data from a war zone.
- The partnership with Russia provides vital resources for North Korea’s strained economy.
The reported presence of North Korean officials aiding Russia’s war in Ukraine is a “win-win” scenario for Kim Jong Un, offering military advantages with few downsides, experts on the reclusive territory told Business Insider.
In a discussion on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “North Korea has, in fact, entered the war,” per state-run outlet United24 Media.
It follows a Washington Post report that cited a Ukrainian military intelligence official as saying thousands of North Korean troops are already in Russia, receiving training for potential combat by the end of the year. The Kremlin has denied the report, and supporting evidence has so far not publicly emerged.
The latest claims come after scattered reports in recent months described the presence of North Korean officials such as engineers and technicians working in support roles behind the front lines of the conflict.
They number in the dozens, per The Guardian’s recent reporting.
Even limited numbers of North Korean officials aiding Russia offers a vital boost for Kim Jong Un and his regime, experts told Business Insider.
It comes at a time when Kim is racing to build nuclear weapons to deter South Korea’s top ally, the US.
“It’s a win-win situation,” Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., a North Korea defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said. “He’s getting paid, getting access to foreign technology. He’s getting access to real-world combat information to improve his defensive and offensive capabilities.”
Leaving the hermit kingdom
“There’s a wide interest in the world to use the conflict in Ukraine as a laboratory for what’s going to work in future conflicts,” said Bruce W. Bennett, a defense researcher and North Korea specialist at RAND, told BI.
And for sanctions-hit, isolated North Korea, that’s a major opportunity.
North Korea has been documented transferring vast numbers of shells, rockets, glide bombs — and even, it is suspected, aged Soviet-era artillery pieces — to Russia throughout the war.
Experts have suggested that Russia is likely to be offering economic aid and diplomatic assistance in return.
But the deal offers much more. North Korea is trying to modernize its large military and has new leverage to ask for advanced Russian systems or the designs to build them, from submarines and fighter jets to intercontinental ballistic missiles for its growing nuclear arsenal.
Russia has already pledged to help North Korea with satellite launches.
And even without Russian systems or technology transfers, North Korea stands to gain in another notable way: by getting combat-adjacent experience for North Koreans who rarely engage with the outside world.
“There are undoubtedly three classes of North Korean personnel in Russia at the present time,” Bermudez said.
Firstly, there are embassy workers, “typically counselors and military attaches,” who are there to soak up information about the rapidly changing nature of conflict on the Ukrainian battlefield, including when it comes to Western military equipment.
“So have Western air defense systems been successful? If so, which ones? Anything they can find out about the equipment, its vulnerabilities, operational procedures,” Bermudez said.
North Korea is also sending representatives from the manufacturers of military equipment it’s providing, who act as a kind of babysitter to ensure it arrives in a usable condition, he added.
“Finally, there are munitions experts,” Bermudez continued.
These are the engineers and technicians who know how to operate the weapons and are also most likely to be the ones who visit the battlefield to see them in action.
Similarly, Iranian experts have assisted Russians with Shahed attack drones, Ukrainian officials have claimed.
Their job is to train their counterparts, troubleshoot problems, and document successes and failures of military products in a real war situation.
And what they learn there may be extremely valuable back home — they send detailed reports that are absorbed by North Korean military training authorities, potentially feeding into military manuals and training plans, and providing fodder for design or doctrinal changes, Bermudez said.
Russia also sends technical know-how and better parts as they tinker with the North Korean munitions, Bermudez said: “The Russians can say, ‘Oh, we looked at your guidance system. You might want to do A, B, and C or incorporate this gyroscope instead of the gyroscope you’re using — or we can supply you with better gyroscopes.’ That sort of thing.”
The more you can see your weapons fired in a real war situation “the better your system can be,” he said.
“The North Koreans are having an incredible, unique opportunity to do that. And they’re getting paid to do it,” Bermudez added.
Propping up an ailing regime
An analysis from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published in April, argued that the expensive pursuit of hyper-militarization has contributed to the widespread extreme poverty that is now endangering North Korea.
Some 25-30% of the territory’s GDP has been committed to the military, it said, which, per the Council on Foreign Relations, included the fourth-largest army in the world as of 2022.
This makes the lucrative supply partnership with Russia a lifeline for Kim’s regime, Bennett said.
Among the North Korean elite, there’s also a hunger for consumer goods, which Russia’s support can help to provide, Bennett said. But he argued that sending North Koreans abroad as part of the deal comes at some cost.
In early October, six North Korean officials were killed in a strike in occupied Ukraine, according to the Kyiv Post, in a report Business Insider could not independently verify.
The report is one that’s “got to reverberate back in North Korea,” Bennett said.
He pointed out that Kim would likely only allow the most loyal citizens to leave the country — the state’s elites — “in order to minimize the possibility of them defecting.”
“If now the story starts circulating in North Korea that some of their elite kids are being killed, boy, those families are not going to be happy,” he said. That’s something the West can exploit, he suggested.
Nonetheless, there’s little chance of domestic discontents causing an immediate shift in power, the Carnegie Endowment report said.
In the meantime, the question remains as to how long Pyongyang can keep this highly beneficial exchange with Moscow going.
Sooner or later — and recent reports suggest it might be sooner — President Vladimir Putin may well ask for fighting troops for the front.
“There’s only so many advisors that Russia can use,” Bennett said.
