North Korea Ups the Ante in Putin's Ukraine War

Within a week of Putin’s historic visit, North Korea has announced that it is sending anywhere from 3-4 combat engineering units to Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine – which could be as early as July. Western audiences should bear in mind that North Korea reportedly has only 10 combat engineering brigades in total in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) army and that this would amount to 30-40 percent of its existing military engineering capabilities. Should this report be accurate then this would mark a significant military involvement in the Ukraine war by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

North Korea’s pivot to Ukraine is an immediate result of the recent signing of a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between North Korea and Russia during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s June 19 visit. In the weeks and months preceding Putin’s trip to North Korea, the DPRK has played a major role in helping Putin’s war effort by dispatching over 5 million artillery shells to Russia which included much-needed ammunition for the Russian war effort, ranging from 152mm and 122 mm ammunition, ballistic missiles and other various forms of military assistance. The sheer quantity of North Korean supplies sent was reflected in a statement by South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik who said as many as 10,000 shipping containers were sent to Russia from North Korea in the past year.

From the Yalu to the Dnepro

The Russia-North Korean military relationship has been growing by leaps and bounds since former Russian Ministry of Defense Sergei Shoigu visited Pyongyang on July 27, 2023. North Korean arms shipments have gone from a trickle to a veritable flood of ammunition to aid the Russian war effort. To date, most of the North Korean arms shipments have occurred mostly by sea between the North Korean port of Najin and the Russian port of Dunay, 110 miles from North Korea. From there the weapons are transported by rail and air via the vulnerable Trans-Siberian railway to the Russian staging area of Tikhoretsk. The London based thinktank RUSI has referred to this arms pipeline as the North Korean version of the Orient Express.

The larger question from the North Korean announcement about sending military engineers to Ukraine is what role will North Korean engineers play in the war? While North Korea’s decision to send military units to Ukraine is a far cry from Mao’s deployment of over 200,000 Chinese “volunteers” across the Yalu River in October 1950, it does reflect a deepening and unparalleled North Korean involvement in supporting Russia as Putin’s network of continental alliances in Eurasia permits the Russian leader to turn to Korean ally to buttress Russia’s military posture in Ukraine vis-à-vis Europe, the US, and NATO.  

Undoubtedly North Korea’s growing military involvement in the Ukraine war injects an Asian element into Putin’s war narrowing the gap between the Eurasian steppes and the Indo-Pacific.   Moreover, Russia’s recent agreement with North Korea is a return to the grandeur of Soviet strategic relations with North Korea, which in the 1980s was the Soviet Union’s largest trading partner in the Pacific. Not to be lost on Western policymakers is the fact noted by South Korean commentators that the Russian treaty with North Korea pledges immediate military and other assistance “by all means available: in the event of an attack.” These experts interpret the recent agreement as once again laying the groundwork for potential Russian military intervention in the Korean Peninsula should hostilities erupt between North and South Korea. 

Will North Korean Forces Join Russian Units in Combat in Ukraine?

At this stage, the answer seems no. Ukrainian commentary on the North Korean deployment has varied about the implications of what the announcement means regarding actual North Korean military participation in the war. With thousands of Moscow-recruited foreign mercenaries from 40 different countries, ranging from Congo to Nepal fighting in Ukraine, it would be perfectly logical for Moscow to use North Korean manpower to bolster its war effort.

The key question is where would Moscow put them? In an opinion piece for the website Glavred, Ukrainian military expert Oleksandr Kovalenko tried to answer that question by indicating that regular North Korean military units would be much different than the other mercenaries fighting in the war. Even if they are just engineers Kovalenko noted, he believes that combat engineering brigades are not combat units so they won’t necessarily be used in storming Ukrainian frontline positions.

The Institute for the Study of War on the other hand indicated that one of the immediate effects of the deployment would be that the arrival of North Korean combat engineers could free up Russian combat power to conduct operations along its frontlines and permit Moscow to expand its military infrastructure in occupied parts of Ukraine.

Indeed, the one area where North Korean engineers could make an immediate contribution is in the construction of frontline fortifications where it has excelled for decades along its Demilitarized Military Zone (DMZ) with South Korea. Kovalenko believes that their arrival would fill a critical gap in depleted Russian engineering units due to heavy losses in the recent Russian 2024 spring offensive. According to Kovalenko, in those operations, Moscow lost over 2,400 pieces of specialized equipment, and these losses included many combat engineers.

The Economics of North Korean Intervention

Notwithstanding the military impact on the war, one of the important aspects motivating the reported North Korean military deployment is the economic dimension. North Korea’s decision to send 3-4 combat engineering brigades is estimated to be worth $115 million and will be a new source of revenue for the DPRK.

Total revenue from overseas projects for North Korea is estimated to be from $1 to $2 billion annually so the revenue from the deployment is not that lucrative for the DPRK. However, Pyongyang’s agreement with Russia could be seen as more of a pilot project to determine how effective the deployment works for both sides. It also may be more symbolic than monetary given North Korea’s long-time agreement to provide labor to Moscow for its Far Eastern economic projects that have been ongoing since the 1980s and involved tens of thousands of North Korean laborers working in forestry projects in Siberia.

Another notable twist to the recent North Korean engineering announcement is that Pyongyang has already started sending workers to Russian-occupied Donbas to participate in Russian reconstruction projects as early as April.  The news agency Daily NK reported that the first group of North Korean workers flew from Pyongyang to Vladivostok on the North Korea-operated airline, Air Koryo, and later traveled to Donbas via Moscow. Another contingent of workers traveled from Vladivostok to Volgograd to Donbas. The North Korean workers were divided into three workplaces in Donetsk and were placed under the control of North Korea’s External Construction Guidance Bureau and the Ministry of Social Security.

In an interview with a South Korean TV news site Chosun, Senior South Korean researcher Cho Han-beom (who works at the Korea National Institute for Unification Studies) said that “the soldiers being dispatched as part of the engineering unit will earn their payments in foreign currency” and that he estimated their salary will be $800 a month. Given that most foreign mercenaries fighting for Russia earn $2,000 per month then this disparity in pay for the North Koreans would be immensely helpful to Moscow in cutting its costs, particularly in light of their engineering expertise.

According to Ambassador Ryu Hyun-woo, a North Korean defector and former DPRK Ambassador to Kuwait, Pyongyang’s dispatch of combat engineers to Ukraine has a peacetime precedent. He noted in a recent South Korean interview that North Korea previously sent 700 engineering troops from a secretive North Korean-operated company known as Namgang Construction to Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and another 1,000 to Qatar. The North Korean defector noted he has no recollection of North Korea ever dispatching combat engineers overseas to a battlefield environment, as in the case of Ukraine, particularly so soon after the signing of the recent North Korea-Russia Treaty, which he considers to be an automatic military intervention.

Outlining the dilemma this poses for South Korea, one correspondent writing for Chosun believes that dispatching active military units to Ukraine is a challenging problem for the West that requires a much stronger response. The author noted that the participation of active-duty soldiers from North Korean engineering units rather than simple civilian construction workers is a completely different matter even if they are going to rebuild Donets because it is a key strategic point in a hostile conflict and this means that active-duty soldiers from the engineering units, not ordinary workers are being sent.

North Korean laborers working overseas is mostly limited to Russia and China which account for 80 percent of North Korean labor use. Thousands of migrant laborers from North Korea toiled for years on construction sites in Qatar for virtually no pay and were extensively used in the construction of the stadium used for the 2022 World Cup. Qatar reportedly ranks third according to the US Mission to the United Nations cited by a Harvard research analyst, with Kuwait also playing a major role in North Korean labor employment as well. North Korean migrant workers receive at most a tiny pittance of their pay and the majority of their income goes to the North Korean state.

South Korea’s Ukraine Dilemma

North Korea’s deepening military involvement in the Ukraine war creates a unique set of challenges for both South Korea and the United States. Since establishing diplomatic relations with Russia in December 1990, South Korea has long had good relations with Moscow and has developed a thriving trade relationship that seems unaffected by US-backed Russia sanctions.

To date, South Korea has maintained a form of neutrality in the Ukraine war but may be on the verge of abandoning this policy as North Korea deepens its military relationship with Russia. Meanwhile, officials in Kyiv are jealously eyeing the chance to develop arms relations with South Korea and hope that North Korean military involvement leads to a reversal in South Korean policy.

The Ukrainian news agency Ukrininform reports that South Korea has one of the most advanced arms industries in Asia and that between 2017 and 2021, the South Korean defense industry ranks as one of the top 25 biggest arms-exporting countries in the world. South Korea’s K9 155-mm mobile howitzer is considered to be one of the best artillery systems in the world and has already entered service in the NATO-led armies of Finland, Poland, and Estonia. Moreover, by 2027, South Korea could displace Germany as one of the world’s top arms producers.

Unlike its German counterpart Rheinmetall, however, South Korea has avoided providing military assistance to Ukraine due to its policy of neutrality which is traced in its close economic relations with Russia. Instead, Seoul has preferred to send Ukraine humanitarian aid rather than military assistance.

One of the immediate areas that the Biden Administration has asked South Korea to help Ukraine was to offer Ukraine much-needed US 155 mm artillery ammunition. South Korea, along with Turkiye, and South Africa are considered to be the top three largest 155mm ammunition producers in the world. Seoul, however, opted to sidestep the issue by “lending the US 155mm ammunition instead of sending it directly to Ukraine. Earlier this year South Korea began backfilling US weapons stocks with 500,000 rounds of 155 ammunition that the Pentagon had depleted from its own 155mm ammunition stocks.

South Korea’s foot-dragging on Ukraine has been a sore point in relations with the United States. The South Korean newspaper DongA Ilbo newspaper cited an April 2024 US intelligence leak that reported friction between Washington and Seoul over their position on Ukraine which noted that South Korea opted to "lend" the ammunition instead of selling it to the United States to minimize the possibility that South Korean shells might be used in the Ukraine conflict.

North Korea’s deepening military involvement in Ukraine is adding unprecedented pressure on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. South Korean national security adviser Chang Ho-jin recently has indicated that if Russia provides North Korea with precision weapons it would be crossing a red line for South Korea. Chang recently indicated in an interview with the Yonhap news agency that South Korea’s decision to provide weapons to Ukraine will depend on how Russian military cooperation with North Korea progresses.

At risk for South Korea in its relations with Moscow is whether Seoul wants to jeopardize its trade with Russia over Ukraine. South Korean trade with Russia since the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown no signs of slowing down. In 2022, South Korea exported $7.48 billion to Russia as its main products exported were cars ($894 million), Iron $602 million, and motor vehicle parts and accessories. Over the past 5 years, South Korean exports to Russia increased at an annual rate of 39.5 percent from $1.42 billion in 2017 to $7.4 billion in 2022. By comparison, in 2005, South Korea exported services to Russia worth $465 million.

Russian trade with South Korea in 2022 amounted to $12.7 billion as its main export products were coal briquettes $4.62 billion, crude petroleum worth $2 billion, and refined petroleum $148 billion. During the past 5 years, Russian exports to South Korea increased at an annualized rate of 48.8 percent, rising from $1.74 billion to $12.7 billion in 2022.

The Two Koreas’ Emerging Footprint in the Eurasian Steppes

There are a variety of ways to look at the North Korean deployment announcement, all of which could indicate a variety of motives and aims by Kim Jong-un and Putin who are both eager to present the image that neither country is isolated. It is also becoming vividly apparent that the Ukraine war is now rapidly becoming part of the geopolitics of the Korean peninsula.

Russian experts on the Ukraine war have long hinted that they would prefer to see the Ukraine war emerge as another frozen conflict similar to the DMZ on the Korean peninsula, with the Dnepro River serving as a new dividing line, or 38th Parallel. Such a scenario would perfectly suit Russia’s long-term interests should hostilities be suspended which would allow Moscow to rebuild and rearm to fight Ukraine in another phase of what would appear to be an ostensibly frozen conflict.

A far more likely option for Putin at this stage is to utilize his deepening alliance with Kim Jong-un to obtain additional manpower and renew Russian influence over North Korea. In exchange for his assistance, Kim Jong-un would receive much-needed Russian investment, oil, food, and potentially high-tech weaponry. At the same time, however, Putin’s pivot to North Korea could backfire on Moscow by pushing South Korea into taking a far more aggressive stance on the war by becoming a major arms supplier to Ukraine which would also further stoke inter-Korean tension.

North Korean involvement in the Ukraine war, even if limited to a non-combat role, underscores how Putin is expanding his list of Eurasian land allies as part of his effort to counter the United States and NATO. While the war in Ukraine is Europe’s largest conflict since the end of the Second World War, it is now spilling over into the Indo-Pacific theater becoming a truly Eurasian affair. It further deepens the Muscovite nexus with land-based continental allies from Beijing to Pyongyang, offering Putin an interference-free Ground-based Line of Communication (GLOC) from the Black Sea to the Pacific

Geopolitically, the war further underscores how a Pacific-centric leaning American-led maritime alliance made up of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea is unable to interfere with Putin’s interior line of communication and prevent him from being resupplied by a key Pacific ally in an ongoing conflict with a key NATO-backed ally. In this environment, the changing geopolitics of Inner Asia, consisting of the Middle Corridor region of the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Inner Mongolia are simply failing to register on the policy radars of many of the Washington DC policy elite. Most troublesome is the fact that Russia and its Eurasian allies China, Iran, and North Korea are creating a cordon sanitaire in Inner Asia free of Western interference.

Another aspect of North Korean involvement in the Ukraine war largely lost on most policy audiences in the United States is that President Putin has been quite busy the past several years militarizing the Global South, seeking additional sources of manpower for his war from as many as 40 different countries to feed into his war of attrition against Ukraine. Putin has been busy recruiting enormous amounts of manpower for his war in Ukraine from Nepal to Africa. A reported 15,000 Nepalese, for example, have been recruited by Putin to fight in his war in Ukraine, and the United States and its NATO allies seem to be flat-footed in generating any type of policy response to Putin’s dazzling footwork in his Ukrainian boxing ring.

To make matters worse, Putin is now joined by his North Korean ally in Ukraine and continues to outmaneuver the United States on the Eurasian chessboard and Kim Jong-un’s decision to join Russia ups the ante in Ukraine and is nothing more than a manifestation of Putin’s effort to replicate what Bismarck described as the “rolling of the iron dice.”