By Michelle Ye Hee Lee (Michelle Ye Hee Lee is The Washington Post’s Tokyo bureau chief, covering Japan and the Korean peninsula.)
Thousands of North Korean soldiers in Russia are believed to be there to aid Moscow’s war against Ukraine, a massive and unprecedented mobilization of troops by Pyongyang for a faraway war that complements the munitions already provided to Moscow by the regime.
The move is something of an about-face by leader Kim Jong Un, who U.S. officials say has provided both weapons and personnel to support Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Since 1953, when the Korean War ended in an armistice, the North has been preparing for conflict to resume with the South — amassing a large arsenal of weapons and one of the biggest militaries in the world.
But Pyongyang has rarely gotten involved in foreign wars due to a long-held belief that its soldiers should be inside its own country, where they can be indoctrinated.
North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui went so far as to call the conflict a “righteous holy war” while visiting Russia on Friday.
So officials in Washington, Seoul, Kyiv and beyond are asking: What exactly is Kim getting in return?
Russia and North Korea, two secretive states under heavy international sanctions, are highly unlikely to disclose the terms. While Putin’s need is clear as the war in Ukraine drags on for a third year — more than 600,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or injured in the war, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said this week — we may never know exactly what Kim’s motivations are.
But here are key theories of what Kim stands to gain — and what it could mean for his regime.
The regime is almost certainly earning hard currency
U.S. and South Korean officials say Pyongyang has been sending weapons to Russia since 2022, and that about 10,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia to date.
That could amount to enormous sums of money for Kim’s cash-strapped regime.
North Korea has a long history of sending workers — mainly lumberjacks and builders — to Russia, and they provide a stream of valuable foreign currency that helps keep Kim in power.
Those laborers typically make about $650 a month, with $50 to $150 being paid to the worker directly. The rest is split between the regime and the operators who arrange jobs for the laborers, according to a 2024 human rights report by South Korea’s Unification Ministry.
In comparison, the soldiers being sent to Russia now may be making far more per month, with the regime taking even more of a cut than it does with the workers, experts say.
South Korea’s spy agency said last week that Russia is expected to pay each North Korean soldier about $2,000 each month, a total of $20 million per month for 10,000 soldiers.
“We’re talking about a couple hundred million dollars a year in cash, and then, obviously, the weapons sales as well. So we’re talking about billions, potentially,” said Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul who specializes in the North Korean economy.
There is no evidence of such a bonanza yet, and there may be little sign of it depending on how the money is spent, Ward said.
While the money could finance some of Kim’s economic efforts, such as bringing more of the economy under his direct control or building more factories to boost domestic production, it could also end up going toward vanity projects — or developing his nuclear and weapons program.
“He must be getting cash and technology. And, you know, sadly, I think that he’s much more interested in the technology than the cash,” Ward said.
North Korea could be getting technological help for its nuclear program
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visit the Vostochny Cosmodrome in southeast Russia on Sept. 13, 2023. (Vladimir Smirnov/Pool/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images)
Pyongyang is highly likely to ask Moscow for cutting-edge technology in exchange for its support for Russia’s war against Ukraine, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said after a meeting with his American counterpart at the Pentagon this week.
“North Korea is very likely to ask for technology transfers in diverse areas,” he said, including for tactical nuclear weapons, reconnaissance satellites, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarines capable of firing ballistic missiles.
Pyongyang and Moscow have a long history of military cooperation, including on nuclear technology and weapons development, dating back to the Soviet-supported foundation of North Korea as a Communist state in 1948.
The Soviet Union helped North Korea build its nuclear research facility at Yongbyon in the 1960s, which became the source for the fissile material used in the six nuclear devices that Pyongyang has detonated since 2006. North Korea is now thought to have assembled 50 nuclear warheads and to have the fissile material for between 70 and 90 nuclear weapons, according to the Arms Control Association.
When it comes to missiles, North Korea has made remarkable technological strides in the past decade. Just this week, Pyongyang set a record when it sent an ICBM 4,350 miles into the atmosphere — more than 17 times higher than the International Space Station.
There are strong indications that North Korea got much of its technology from Russia, experts say.
For example, the North Korean solid-fuel tactical ballistic missile KN-23, first tested in 2019, is “remarkably similar” to the Russian Iskander-M missile, Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, a Ukrainian expert on Russian warfare, wrote in a note for the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank. The North Korean missile has a maximum range of 430 miles and can be used with both conventional and nuclear warheads.
Now, as the two pariah states grow ever closer, experts say Russia could be providing North Korea with even greater technical assistance for missile and nuclear programs.
Robert Peters, a nuclear and missile expert at the Heritage Foundation, wrote last week that Russia had the potential to “supercharge” North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
Specifically, Washington and Seoul were concerned Russia could help North Korea miniaturize nuclear warheads so they could fit on its missiles — a tricky technical challenge it does not yet appear to have mastered.
Russia is “ideally situated” to help North Korea to put a nuclear warhead on a modern cruise missile or multiple warheads on an ICBM, Peters said. “If North Korea did receive this technical know-how from Russia, the security situation in Northeast Asia would change fundamentally because North Korea would be able to target sites across East Asia and North America with salvos of nuclear-tipped cruise and ballistic missiles,” he wrote.
In addition, sending troops to an active combat zone offers Kim a rare opportunity to improve his conventional capabilities for his army.
Although Kim is believed to have sent technical advisers and some of his most highly trained special forces, including members of the elite “Storm Corps,” North Korea has not been involved in full-scale war since the armistice 70 years ago. The battlefields of Ukraine and Russia would provide it exposure to the latest tactics, including the incredible advances in drone warfare just over the past few years.
“North Korean soldiers will gain practical experience in this war, understanding what land warfare entails, learning the use of artillery, drones, missiles and so on,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a South Korean broadcaster on Thursday as he pushed for an international response to the deployment.
Kim Jong Un craves international attention. He’s getting it now.
Hardly a day has gone by in recent weeks without North Korea’s troops in news headlines. U.S. and NATO officials are warning that the deployment of Kim’s troops to Russia is a “very, very serious issue” that could have reverberations in both Europe and the Pacific.
It’s exactly where Kim wants to be: the center of international attention.
North Korea and Russia have been deepening their military cooperation as they join forces against a Western-led global order. Their leaders signed a defense treaty in June, which states that if one country is subject to an “armed invasion,” the other would provide “military and other assistance with all means in its possession.”
“I’ve always thought this a win-win for both sides, united by virulent anti-Americanism,” said John Foreman, who was the British defense attaché to Russia between 2019 and 2022.
“I also think North Korea gets a bit of a prestige boost for aiding Russia. We all know everyone, including Russia and China, has looked down their noses at the DPRK for decades,” Foreman added, using the formal abbreviation for North Korea. “The deal has made people sit up and take notice.”
The decision is not without risks, however.
For these young soldiers sent to Russia — most of them are in their early 20s, some in their late teens, according to South Korean intelligence — it is their first foray into life outside the totalitarian country. Kim risks the possibility of soldiers deserting the battlefield.
“The defection of North Korean special operation forces would represent an embarrassing blow to the Kim regime,” wrote Andrew Yeo and Hanna Foreman at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Source: The Washington Post
