Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently accused North Korea of plans to send 10,000 soldiers to fight for Russia in Ukraine. South Korean intelligence later gave credence to Zelenskyy’s assertion, as the country’s legislators noted that North Korea has already dispatched 3,000 soldiers to Russia.
North Korea lending a helping hand to Russia is nothing new. The country has already provided Russia with significant munitions to supplement its depleted reserves. North Korean soldiers, in fact, are likely already fighting in the conflict.
North Korea’s alleged decision to send additional soldiers to fight demonstrates the inadequacy of the West’s actions. Wavering western commitment to Ukraine has not only made the situation in Ukraine worse, it’s compromised global security too.
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Immediate benefits for Russia
Each side in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is seeking any and all assistance from its allies. In Russia’s case, western efforts to make Russian President Vladimir Putin a pariah caused him to turn to another pariah in the international order: North Korea.
Russian-North Korean diplomatic relations are longstanding. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin initially favoured relations with South Korea over its northern counterpart. But since Putin assumed power in 2000, Russia has strengthened its ties with North Korea, albeit with a few notable exceptions.
Russia has always been the dominant partner in the relationship. North Korea, however, has leveraged Russia’s diplomatic isolation for its own benefit. This explains why it’s providing soldiers to Russia on a scale that helps address the most immediate Russian concern: lessening the burden on its population.
Russia has employed mass mobilization in the conflict, but it has sought to push this burden onto the ethnic minorities and rural population of the country.
The protracted nature of the conflict, however, means that it’s increasingly difficult for Russia to disproportionately mobilize these elements. The more Putin’s government relies on ethnic Russians from the larger cities of the country, the more it puts his position under strain. Ten thousand North Korean soldiers will help alleviate this issue in the short term.
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Benefits for North Korea
Despite North Korea’s diplomatic connections with Russia, it remains one of the world’s most isolated countries.
North Korea’s closest relationship is with China, which is both a blessing and a curse — a blessing because China, for its own reasons, frequently provides diplomatic cover for North Korean actions; a curse because it puts North Korea at risk of becoming dependent on China, even though their objectives do not often align.
North Korea’s deepening alliance with Russia is reminiscent of its strategy during the Cold War, when it maintained strong relations with both the Soviet Union and China to prevent itself from being subsumed by either.
North Korea will also receive substantive benefits from its alliance with Russia. An endemic problem for North Korea is food shortages. During the 1990s, as many as three million people died from starvation.
Bound for North Korea? Two goats stand in a meadow near Moscow in the late spring.
(AP Photo/Michael Probst)
There is evidence North Korea faced famine conditions as recently as 2023. Russia’s delivery of almost 500 goats to North Korea in what’s been dubbed a “goats for guns” exchange addresses a pressing need for North Koreans.
North Korean participation in the Russia-Ukraine war also gives the country opportunities to access Russian military training. While western analysts have criticized Russia’s military performance in terms of training and doctrine, it still represents a substantial upgrade for North Korea. Furthermore, there is no substitute for the live experience North Korean soldiers will amass on the battlefield.
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Perhaps more worrisome is potential Russian aid for North Korea’s missile program. As one of the world’s nuclear powers, North Korea has lagged in its ability to deploy nuclear weapons, with its ballistic missile tests frequently ending in malfunctions, disasters or both.
While Russian missile technology has its own limitations, it is still significantly beyond North Korea’s current capabilities.
Given the pressure that North Korea has been able to exert with its missile tests alone in recent years, any improvement in its capabilities has the potential to destabilize the Asia-Pacific region.
This photo provided in October 2022 by the North Korean government purportedly shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watching a missile test at an undisclosed location in North Korea, though it could not be independently verified.
(Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
Global consequences for western inaction
Russia’s need for North Korean support will undoubtedly improve North Korea’s military technology, as well as provide its army with valuable military experience.
North Korea has in the past — and will likely in the future — stoke instability in the Asia-Pacific region. The gains North Korea has made from its partnership with Russia will only increase its ability to pose a threat in the region.
It should not be a shocking development that North Korea provided Russia with soldiers. Instead, what should be controversial is how the West’s wavering support of Ukraine and delays in providing meaningful aid have resulted in a protracted conflict that gave Russia the time to muster resources, like North Korean soldiers, for the conflict.
Western states, in so doing, not only put Ukraine in a disadvantageous position, but weakened their own security as well.