The North Korean regime’s deployment of several thousand troops to aid Russia in its unlawful war against Ukraine is a sign of “Russian despair,” according to defense officials and analysts.
The move only renews attention on Russia’s flailing economy and President Vladimir Putin’s failing military efforts, experts say. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte immediately called the deployment a sign of Putin’s “growing desperation.”
The United States and many of its Allies and Partners, including Japan and South Korea, condemned the action as a dangerous and major escalation of a war now in its third year.
The small number of North Korean forces sent to Russia will do little to help Putin’s cause, given about 1,200 Russian troops are being killed daily and the North Korean troops are largely inexperienced, analysts say.
“They are too young and won’t understand exactly what it means. They’ll just consider it an honor to be selected as the ones to go to Russia among the many North Korean soldiers,” Lee Woong-gil, a former member of the deployed unit, which is touted as a special forces group, told The Associated Press (AP). He defected to South Korea in 2007. “But I think most of them won’t likely come back home alive.”
Further stacking the odds against them, the North Korean forces have not formally trained with Russian forces, the United Kingdom Defence Ministry stated, noting that the “forces would almost certainly experience interoperability difficulties having not previously carried out joint military exercises.”
To date, North Korea has pledged 12,000 troops to Russia. About 8,000 are reportedly training for combat in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, which is roughly the number of Russian troops killed weekly on the frontline, according to a November 2024 report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank.
The report said North Korean troops could suffer high casualty rates in the war. Under their recent defense pact, North Korea also has been supplying Russia with munitions and missiles.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un “is taking a big gamble. If there are no large casualty numbers, he will get what he wants to some extent. But things will change a lot if many of his soldiers die in battle,” Ahn Chan-il, a former North Korean army first lieutenant who now heads the World Institute for North Korea Studies think tank in Seoul, South Korea, told AP.
The People’s Republic of China, meanwhile, is reportedly displeased with North Korea for sending troops to the Russian frontlines because it “poses fresh risks for China and tests the limits of its ability to influence its nuclear-armed neighbors,” according to The Wall Street Journal newspaper.
“A chief concern for Beijing is how a combat role for the North Koreans could invite even greater military partnerships between the U.S., Western Europe and its Asia-Pacific allies,” the newspaper reported.
“China is clearly confronted with the reality that it is losing influence over Pyongyang, while Russia is gaining influence,” Eric Ballbach, the Korea Foundation fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told the newspaper.
North Korea’s troop deployment may also spur South Korea to change its policy and provide lethal aid to Ukraine.
“South Korea signaled possible readiness to increase support for Ukraine amid continued Ukrainian intelligence on the deployment of North Korean forces near the Russian border with Ukraine,” another recent ISW report noted, citing a statement by South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul.
