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Just after the New Year, North Korean television viewers got a gift. The state broadcaster aired a new film, “72 Hours,” according to NK News, a news site focused on North Korea. The film tells the story of the first three days of the Korean War and how the conflict was started by the rogue South. (In fact, North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, carried out the initial attack.) Among the propaganda messages contained in the story, closer ties with Moscow are of great importance, with fans of the film including the Russian ambassador to Pyongyang. Capital of North Korea.
These days, Russia and North Korea together are writing a new history of war. North Korea has sent about 12,000 troops to fight in Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. These soldiers are believed to be some of North Korea’s most elite, hailing from the “Storm Corps”, a special forces organization whose lineage traces back to the units sent on a daring but ultimately unsuccessful mission to assassinate the President of South Korea in 1968. May be connected to. The North Koreans began appearing on the Ukrainian front in early November and in recent weeks have entered into even fiercer fighting in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces captured the area last year.
The idea of sending troops to aid Russia apparently originated from the North Korean side. This deployment brings great risk for the country’s leader Kim Jong Un. The fight has been fierce. North Korean soldiers appear to be unprepared for modern drone warfare and the flat, open landscape around Kursk is a stark contrast to the mountainous terrain at home. On January 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine had captured two North Korean soldiers. South Korean intelligence agencies estimate that perhaps 300 North Korean soldiers may have been killed and another 2,700 wounded. Ultimately, such losses “could affect North Korean society as well,” says Kim Jung-ho, South Korea’s unification minister.
What does Mr. Kim get in return? Perhaps much of the aid already being sent would be in exchange for North Korean ammunition: fuel, food and other resources that help North Korea withstand Western sanctions. Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think-tank, says that since North Korea began aiding Russia’s war efforts in mid-2023, satellite imagery of the customs areas between the two has shown ” “Unprecedented levels of traffic” have been observed. South Korean intelligence agencies believe that the North Korean state could receive up to $2,000 per month for each soldier it sends.
North Korea is also looking for high-end capabilities. It is believed that designs for intercontinental ballistic missiles and re-entry vehicles as well as submarine and satellite technology are on the wish list. Such help may be difficult to locate. “It’s a blueprint in a suitcase; “We wouldn’t necessarily see it,” says Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation, another US think-tank.
Western governments assess that Russia has become more willing to share technological knowledge that it once considered off limits. During a recent visit to South Korea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US believes Russia wants to share advanced space and satellite technology with North Korea in exchange for help on the battlefield.
Yet the exchange goes beyond material goods or weapon designs. Peter Ward of the South Korean think-tank Sejong Institute says a “soft technology transfer” is also taking place. North Korea can see how its ammunition and missiles perform under real battlefield conditions and against Western air-defense systems. There is also rare real-world experience on the military front, and an opportunity to learn from Russia’s modern warfare experience, but the most striking lesson appears to be about the importance of drones and electronic warfare on modern battlefields in November. Visited a North Korean factory to observe drone demonstrations and ordered mass production of suicide drones.
There are limits to what can be collected. Russia may be eager to use North Korean troops as cannon fodder rather than engage them in sophisticated operations. Jenny Town of the Stimson Center, a Washington think-tank, says many soldiers will never return to North Korea. Those who survive may learn a lot that their regimes would have liked them not to have learned. It is difficult to control access to information among soldiers at the front. Soldiers may also be able to see how prosperous Russia and Ukraine are compared to their homeland. “They will come back with valuable experience, but also possibly with dangerous ideas,” says Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul.
Mr. Kim has clearly decided that the potential rewards outweigh any risks. The ultimate prize may be to establish a long-term strategic partnership that endures beyond the war in Ukraine. Sending soldiers to die for Mr Putin’s ambitions is certainly one way to signal commitment. As Ms. Towne says: “Now there’s a blood debt.”
The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under license. Original content can be found at www.economist.com
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