What North Korea Gains From Its Alliance With Russia — and What It Risks

Sending troops to fight against Ukraine has gotten North Korea much-needed cash and diplomatic leverage. But there may be hidden costs, too.

Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, has taken his boldest diplomatic gamble by supplying an estimated 11,000 troops and stockpiles of weapons to Russia to support its war against Ukraine.

The deployment provides timely foreign aid for Russia’s war efforts, with North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces in the Kursk region to help them retake territories lost to Ukraine. On Monday, Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said the Pentagon had seen “indications” that an unspecified number of North Korean soldiers had been killed and wounded there.

Sending the troops brings a range of benefits for North Korea, including much-needed cash and diplomatic leverage. Mr. Kim is receiving billions of dollars’ worth of food, oil, cash and advanced weapons systems from Russia that will help his regime endure international sanctions and upgrade its conventional armed forces, analysts say.

Mr. Kim had been in desperate need of such a breakthrough.

A triple whammy of incidents has rocked his dynastic regime over the past decade. First, American-led U.N. sanctions devastated North Korea’s economy by banning all its major exports, including coal, seafood, textiles and workers, as well as sharply curtailing its oil imports. Mr. Kim sought to lift the sanctions through direct diplomacy with former President Donald J. Trump. But the negotiations collapsed without an agreement in 2019,​ tarnishing Mr. Kim’s domestic image as an infallible leader. Then, the pandemic further crippled the North’s economy.

Pyongyang provides troops, missiles and howitzers.

North Korea looked more isolated than ever when it saw opportunities opening up as President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine dragged on. Russia was using up troops and ammunition, and North Korea had plenty of both to offer. Its military is one of the world’s largest conventional armed forces, with 1.3 million members. And it kept huge stockpiles of artillery shells, rockets and other conventional weapons — many of them outdated — as well as new ballistic missiles it developed under Mr. Kim’s ambitious arms-buildup program.

The courtship started when North Korea invited Russia’s then-defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, to a massive weapons parade in Pyongyang in July last year. North Korean weapons began flowing into Russia soon afterward. When Mr. Putin invited Mr. Kim to a summit meeting in the Russian Far East in September last year, Russia showed off what it could offer North Korea in return, taking Mr. Kim on tours of a space launch facility, an aircraft factory and a naval ​port.

In June, Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin signed a treaty of mutual defense and cooperation in Pyongyang. North Korea began sending troops to Russia afterward.

North Korea has also provided Russia with 20,000 shipping containers’ worth of weapons, including millions of artillery shells, newly developed ballistic missiles, multiple-launch rocket systems and long-range howitzers, South Korean officials have said.

Mr. Kim met with Russia’s new defense minister, Andrei R. Belousov, in Pyongyang on Nov. 29, vowing to continue support for Russia and “vigorously expand” ties.

That meeting heralded more troops and weapons supplies from North Korea, said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

Brisk weapons exports to Russia are bringing life to North Korea’s munitions industry. Mr. Kim has called for increased production when he visited weapons factories in recent months and for mass manufacturing of attack drones. North Korea is also expanding a missile-manufacturing factory in an apparent effort to produce more KN-23 missiles, which it has supplied to Russia to use against Ukraine, according to researchers at a U.S.-based think tank.

Russia pays with oil, food and weapon upgrades.

The North has earned up to $5.5 billion through arms deals with Russia,​ according to Olena Guseinova, a researcher at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul​. In a report published in October​, she also estimated that North Korea could ​bring in up to $572 million annually through deploying troops — a huge sum by the ​North’s standards​. The country’s official exports amounted to $330 million only last year.

Neither Russia nor North Korea has revealed how Moscow was paying North Korea.

But North Korean oil tankers have been bringing in far more oil from Russia than is allowed under U.N. sanctions, according to an analysis of satellite imagery published last month by the UK-based Open Source Center and the BBC.

On the ground, North Korea’s military is also gaining valuable battlefield insights for the first time in decades, including innovations in drone use that are changing modern warfare. The war against Ukraine is providing North Korea with its first opportunity to test its newer KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles against Western air defense systems in live combat. Its technicians traveled with the missiles to identify the deficiencies​ and collect data to take home, according to officials in South Korea.

One fear in Seoul is that in the future Mr. Kim may be able to bargain for Russian help to master technologies needed for nuclear missiles that could hit targets across the Pacific.

“I don’t think they have yet reached the stage where Russia would provide sensitive nuclear and missile technologies and components,” said Jang Seho, an analyst at the Seoul-based Institute for National Security Strategy.

The new stream of revenues and weapons technologies from Russia will cushion North Korea from U.N. sanctions and embolden Mr. Kim​’s postures toward Washington and its allies. It remains to be seen if President-elect Trump seeks to resume his personal diplomacy with Mr. Kim.

What are the risks for Mr. Kim?

But the deployment also carries several risks for Mr. Kim.

The North Korean special forces have been fighting alongside Russian paratroopers and marines to help Russia retake territories lost to Ukraine in its Kursk region, South Korean intelligence officials said. They were trained to infiltrate by sea and river and across Korea’s hilly terrain. It was unclear how well they were prepared for a war of attrition fought in trenches and on flatlands with artillery and drones, military experts said.

South Korean officials are closely monitoring how the North’s weapons and troops fare in the war — with the potential for battlefield desertions — to glean insights into ​its military’s preparedness. Many of the North Korean artillery rounds were decades old and have proven to be duds.

The drain on its supplies may weaken North Korea at home.

​North Korea has already sent so many conventional weapons and ammunition to Russia “it cannot fight a war ​in Korea right now even if it wanted to,” said Doo Jin-ho, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul.​ “That may be Kim Jong-un’s biggest vulnerability now.”

​Some South Korean analysts doubt that collaboration between Pyongyang and Moscow will endure.​ The two economies have so little to offer each other that Russia would account for less than 2 percent of North Korea’s international trade other than arms deals, while China accounts for more than 90 percent, according to a report by researchers at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.

But even bilateral trade between North Korea and China slowed to $1.5 billion in the first nine months of the year, down from $1.6 billion during the same period a year ago.

That may reflect another gamble by Mr. Kim. North Korea has long sought to play Beijing against Moscow, but some analysts say that North Korea’s deepening military ties with Russia could damage its relations with China.

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

• North Korean Casualties: The Pentagon has seen “indications” that the North Korean forces who have been sent to Russia to help the Kremlin in its war against Ukraine have suffered their first casualties.
• U.S. Aid: The Biden administration is unlikely to spend all of the remaining $5.6 billion that Congress has allocated to send weapons and other military help to Ukraine, a senior Defense Department official said.
• Putin Seeks Vindication: Humbled by the downfall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, President Vladimir Putin of Russia could intensify his costly offensive in Ukraine to recover some prestige.

How We Verify Our Reporting

• Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs, videos and radio transmissions to independently confirm troop movements and other details.
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