The Brief – Putin's North Korea experiment

Reports that North Korean troops would join Russia in its war of aggression against Ukraine have been circulating for a while. Now Putin has confirmed this is indeed happening.

How do we interpret this new escalation? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Brussels last week that North Korea was preparing to send 10,000 troops, calling this “a first step to a world war.”

Though it made headlines, strictly speaking, 10,000 North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia are unlikely to be a game changer. A six-digit number, however, could be.

North Korea is a nuclear power, but it is not going to declare war on Ukraine, nor is it going to launch punitive strikes with ballistic missiles when its mercenaries get killed.

Simply put, North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un has, from the outset, realised that Russia’s military adventure in Ukraine could bring him benefits. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is a pariah state, and its relations, even with Russia and China, were not great.

But since Russia encountered difficulties in Ukraine, North Korea leveraged its importance by supplying millions of ammunition shells which Russia obviously lacks.

When he started the aggression, Putin did not imagine the war would drag on for so long. Although Russia’s economy has taken to a war footing, it needed North Korean supplies. In recent months, reportedly, every second shell fired against Ukraine is produced in North Korea.

A report by a think tank estimated that the cash-strapped North Korea earned about $540 million last year from arms sales to Russia. We can only imagine that North Korea also has cheap oil but also expertise in terms of ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technology.

But Kim wants more, to seize the opportunity and take the Russia relationship to a higher level. And Russia would be more than happy if Kim sent troops. They cost little ($2,000 a month per piece) – although the money doesn’t go into their pockets.

So maybe even the term “mercenaries” is misplaced because soldiers of fortune are usually decently paid. North Korean soldiers, however, are happy if they are decently fed, which doesn’t often happen in their country, famous for recurrent mass starvation.

For Putin, having fewer Russian troops on the battlefield is a relief and for North Korea, gaining combat experience is precious. Officially, North Korea is still at war with South Korea, but its soldiers lack combat experience—the last who had such were their grandfathers in the 1950s.

Those appear to be Moscow's and Pyongyang's “advantages.” But there are also downsides. Clearly, North Koreans joining Russia on the Ukraine battlefield is a sign of Moscow's weakness.

Also, North Korean involvement is prompting the South to make its own moves. South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, vowed to respond to North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia, including by potentially supplying offensive weapons to Ukraine. So far, South Korea has helped Ukraine by providing arms to the United States and Ukraine’s neighbours, as it has as a principle not to send lethal weapons, but he said that could change.

And there is one more risk factor. North Koreans have only known their communist autarchy. Once they find themselves in an environment more open to the world, their reaction is unpredictable.

According to reports which could not be independently verified, 15 North Koreans stationed in Russia have already defected, although they were later found and detained by Russian forces.

Reportedly, a Ukrainian project called “I Want to Live" now spreads messages to North Korean soldiers to surrender to Ukrainian forces in a new Korean-language video.

Launched in September 2022 by Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence, the 24-hour "I Want to Live" hotline and YouTube channel until now helped Russian soldiers to willingly surrender themselves to the Ukrainian army.

The video shows clean prisoner-of-war camps and highlights the good living conditions North Korean soldiers could experience if they surrendered. The narrator explains that those who surrender will receive three meals daily, including meat, fresh vegetables and bread.

"Surrender! Ukraine will shelter you, feed you and keep you warm! Thousands of Russian soldiers made the right choice and are now waiting for the end of the war in good conditions: comfortable barracks, three hot meals a day, medical care."

"No matter how many soldiers Pyongyang sends to help Russia, no matter the destination - Ukrainian POW camps are ready to receive soldiers of any nationality, religion, and ideological views," a message in Korean on the Telegram platform reads.

It may be hard at this stage it is hard to predict how Putin’s experiment of bringing North Korean troops will end. But one thing is sure: this is yet another of his unpredictable gambles.

What could the EU do? For what is worth, we suggest working more closely with Seoul, whose advanced weaponry contribution is necessary.

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Look out for

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Bruges, Belgium. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is in Barcelona, Spain, to attend the 9th Union of the Mediterranean Regional Forum. European Commissioner Vĕra Jourová is in Prague attending a reception on the occasion of the National Day of the Czech Republic. EPC organises in Brussels, Belgium, a hybrid conference on the “The Rule of Law beyond the EU Member States: Assessing the Union's Performance.” PubAffairs Brussels organises a conference in hybrid format “The development of renewable ethanol biorefineries as a strategic resource to accelerate the transition towards a competitive low-carbon economy”

[Edited by Alice Taylor-Braçe/Rajnish Singh]