What We (Think We) Know About North Korean Troops Sent to Ukraine

Donald Rumsfeld, when US Defense Secretary, famously said the following about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction at a Department of Defense (DoD) news briefing in February 2002:

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

After weeks of rumor and counter rumor, that very much sums up our understanding of the troops that North Korea is sending to support Russia  – but it appears to be becoming a little clearer at last.

Ukraine briefing to the UN Security Council

Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Sergiy Kyslytsya, addressed a meeting of the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday called at Kyiv's request to discuss the supply of North Korean weapons and manpower to Russia for use in the war against Ukraine.

Kyslytsya began by categorizing the aid Russia is receiving from North Korea (DPRK) as being illegal and a violation of the UN Charter as both countries were under UNSC sanctions. He itemized the resolutions that Russia and North Korea have breached and called on the UNSC North Korea Sanctions committee to investigate the failure of Pyongyang and Moscow to comply with the relevant decisions.

He then went on to detail what is currently known about the DPRK forces that have been dispatched. He said that up to 12,000 servicemen, were being trained at five training grounds in Russia’s Eastern Military District. This number included at least 500 officers of which three were generals from the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA).

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Kyslytsya named the generals as: Colonel General Kim Young Bok, Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Special Forces Operations; Colonel General Lee Chang Ho, Deputy Chief of the General Staff – Head of the Reconnaissance Directorate; and Major General Shin Geum Cheol, Head of the Main Operational Directorate.

According to Kyslytsya, the North Korean servicemen will wear Russian uniforms, use Russian military IDs and be integrated into Russian units manned by ethnic minorities from the Asian part of the Russian Federation to disguise their origin. He said the plan was to set up five DPRK manned units each the size of a motorized rifle regiment.

He went on to say that starting from Oct. 23 at least 2,000 DPRK troops were moved by aircraft close to the border with Ukraine, with 400 arriving in Russia’s Kursk region. He added that it was anticipated that as many as 4,500 North Koreans would be in a position to take part in combat operations in November.

What do others say?

The Financial Times reported that about 3,000 North Korean soldiers were moved in civilian trucks from Russia’s Far East to a base in the Kursk region about 50 kilometers (30 miles) out from the Ukrainian border.

It cites unnamed Ukrainian intelligence sources as saying this 3,000 includes a few hundred special forces troops from the DPRK’s 11th Army “Storm” Corps. The same sources say the rest are mainly inexperienced low-ranking infantry whose lack of combat experience and their limited training raises questions over their likely effectiveness on the battlefield.

One intelligence source says they will be totally unprepared for high-intensity modern warfare claiming that most of them had seen kamikaze drones, hundreds of which are continually present on the Ukrainian battlefield, for the very first time when they arrived in Russia. The source said that Moscow would most probably deploy them as yet more “cannon fodder” for their infamous meat assaults.

One South Korean intelligence source says that a lot of the training time of North Korean fighters is taken up learning about 100 basic Russian military terms – which the source said, “they understand with difficulty.” Russian soldiers who have had contact with these DPRK reinforcements are already being skeptical on how they can communicate with and integrate the North Koreans into their units, as Kyiv Post reported previously.

DPRK’s 11th Army Corps  is part of the estimated 200,000 special forces troops North Korea holds. According to the Washington Post their training is almost totally linked to a future conflict in the mountainous areas of South Korea and they specialize in sabotage operations, kidnapping of key individuals, conducting surprise attacks and ambushes.

Although they are said to have the best training and receive the best weapons available to North Korean forces their capabilities are termed as “rudimentary,” compared to the special forces of most other countries, by the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

These views are shared by others, including Hyunsung Lee, a former member of North Korea’s special forces who defected to the South. He says, “These soldiers will likely have difficulty adapting to modern warfare. They are not trained to handle technology and advanced equipment. If they are on the battlefield, the Ukrainians will use advanced technology, drones, and missiles. They simply have no previous experience with this form of war.”

However, Go Myung-hyun, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul said, “They won’t be super-soldiers, but they will be young, tough, in decent physical shape and much better than the regiments of middle-aged former convicts who Russia has used up to now.”

What about the North Korean authorities?

Pyongyang at first ridiculed the early reports of the deployment of its troops by South Korea but, as the evidence mounted, they no longer protest but neither do they confirm one way or the other.

According to Russian media, North Korea’s Foreign Minister Choi Son Hee, has visited Russia twice in the last six weeks and is expected to again come to Moscow soon. A South Korean intelligence source told CNN that she will discuss the possibility of supplying  more troops to the battlefield in Ukraine in exchange for unspecified “mutual services” from Russia.

… and China?

China is concerned about the presence of North Korean troops in Russia and the apparent developing relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang, according to a Financial Times report. It says that Beijing was particularly concerned about the strategic partnership agreement Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un signed in June.

The FT article goes on to say that since then Chinese diplomats and officials have not been seen to participate in official joint events with North Korea to the same extent as they previously did – although China’s Foreign Ministry persists in claiming it was “not aware” of the dispatch of DPRK troops to Russia.

Andrei Lankov, an expert on North Korea from Kookmin University in Seoul told the FT that he believes Beijing will be more sanguine. He says China doesn’t like it but realizes: “The North Koreans are doing this for money, military technologies and battlefield experience, not out of any sense of solidarity with Russia,” before adding “… and Russia is not going to get themselves into trouble [with Beijing] just out of gratitude to Kim Jong-un.”

What about the North Korean fighters themselves?

“They may not be aware of the current situation between Russia and Ukraine, but they know they have to fight for their country’s national interests. Having completed 10 years of mandatory military service, they are trained to follow orders without thinking,” says Ryu Sung-hyun, another North Korean defector who served in the Korean People’s Army for nearly a decade.

He says that it is unlikely that fighters from the DPRK will dislike being in Russia (or Ukraine), as even for soldiers who are better off than most of their countrymen “North Korea itself is a prison for them.”

Other benefits according to Seoul include the fact that the North Korean soldiers in Russia will be paid $2,000 a month, an astronomical sum in North Korean terms, and the social status of those who perform well on the battlefield and that of their families will improve their lot when [if] they return.

This is a developing story. Read more about North Korean troop deployments in the war with Ukraine here.