North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June 2024 (©KCNA via Kyodo)
North Korean forces' participation in Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has been confirmed by the Ukrainian and South Korean governments.
On October 17, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian forces were preparing to mobilize 10,000 North Korean soldiers. The next day, the Center for Strategic Communication and Information Security under the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy released a video. It claimed that the video showed North Korean soldiers receiving equipment at a training ground in Russia's Far East.
On the same day, South Korea's National Intelligence Service announced that North Korea had decided to dispatch about 12,000 special operation forces of the 11th Corps to Russia. It also reported that about 1,500 of them were transferred to Vladivostok in the Russian Far East on Russian Navy transport ships between October 8 and 13.
10,000 Troops to be Dispatched by End of 2024
In my June 24 "Speaking Out" essay titled "North Korea Sent Military Engineers for Ukraine War," I wrote that North Korean forces were expected to take part in the Ukraine war. This was based on information from inside North Korea.
I also reported that about 1,000 military engineers were sent to Russia in May. This led to Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to North Korea in June. Furthermore, I explained how North Korea was selecting soldiers with good physiques. It aims to increase the number of North Korean soldiers dispatched to Russia to 10,000.
According to the information I obtained since then, the first batch of 1,500 soldiers, or three battalions, was sent to Russia in early May. The second batch of 1,500 was sent in August. As of early October, the third batch of about 5,000 soldiers had been selected and was on standby.
A total of about 10,000 soldiers will be dispatched by the end of 2024, my sources said. The first and second groups were dressed in plain clothes. They worked on construction in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, without participating in the fighting. Russia pays $1,500-2,000 USD per soldier every month. Basically, the money is given not to the soldiers but to Pyongyang.
Apart from soldiers, Pyongyang since the outbreak of the war has sent military officers to learn how Russian forces fight. It aims to apply Russian tactics to North Korean forces.
Sending North Koreans into Battle
If my information mentioned above is correct, the 1,500 soldiers confirmed by South Korea as transferred to Vladivostok may be part of the third batch. In the footage of the training ground in the Far East, they were provided with Russian military uniforms. This indicates that they may be assigned to missions different from working on construction in plain clothes. Moscow may be planning to put North Korean soldiers disguised as Russians into battle.
I was told that in 2023, North Korea considered sending special forces to Russia. However, it canceled the plan after a secret survey of soldiers found that many of them could flee during the fighting. My sources say if North Korean soldiers are thrown into a deadly battle, there would certainly be a large-scale desertion. Ukrainian media have already reported that 18 North Korean soldiers deployed in the Bryansk and Kursk regions in western Russia had escaped.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is said to be in a hurry to obtain advanced weapons and technologies from Russia before a truce in the Ukraine war. These include nuclear submarines, stealth fighter jets, hypersonic glide vehicles, and military satellites.
Russia only exchanges equivalents with North Korea. While it has handed military satellites over to Pyongyang, Moscow is reluctant to provide advanced weapons. Kim is trying to obtain advanced weapons with money he gets in exchange for his soldiers' lives.
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(A version of this article was first published by the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals. Find it in Speaking Out #1192 in Japanese on October 21 and in English on October 24, 2024.)
Author: Tsutomu Nishioka
Professor Nishioka is a senior fellow and a Planning Committee member at the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and a visiting professor at Reitaku University. He covers South and North Koreas.
