The video is grainy but the message is clear. The clip, posted by NK News, purports to show North Korean soldiers in green fatigues receiving basic supplies at a training base in Russia’s east, ahead of joining Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.
News that Pyongyang has sent 3,000 troops to train to fight in the war has horrified Ukraine, the US and Europe. But it has special significance in Seoul – 7,300km from Kyiv – where North Korea is a both an enemy and a nextdoor neighbour.
What was once a European conflict is now an Asian one, too.
In return for weapons and troops, Pyongyang will secure much-needed cash and, possibly, Russian knowhow on intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarines – hardware upgrades that would dramatically intensify the threat the North already poses to its neighbours.
Events in Ukraine are being closely watched in Seoul.
“North Korea’s troop deployment signalled that the war in Ukraine is no longer a conflict that has little to do with South Korea,” the Korea Times said in an editorial.
The soldiers are part of an eventual deployment that, according to US and Ukrainian officials, could rise to as many as 12,000. They include specially trained forces known as the “storm corps”.
“The massive troop dispatch indicates that Russia-North Korea ties are moving beyond the provision of rifles, shells and short-range missiles to the level of a blood alliance,” the Korea Herald said.
On Friday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said North Korean troops were expected to arrive on Sunday and Monday on the frontline in Russia’s western Kursk oblast. He cited “intelligence information” and an update from Ukraine’s commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Zelenskyy described the arrival of North Korea’s military as an “obvious escalatory move” and called on world leaders to put “tangible pressure” on Moscow and Pyongyang. “The world can clearly see what Russia really wants, and that is a continuation of the war. That is why a principled and strong reaction is needed,” he said.
Ukraine has occupied a small salient inside Russia for two and a half months, after a surprise cross-border attack in August. North Korean troops are expected to bolster Russia’s ongoing attempts to kick out Ukrainian forces.
The South fears that North Korean involvement in the Ukraine conflict could have repercussions along their border, where tensions are already running high.
On Friday, the South voiced “grave concern” after Russia moved to ratify its defence treaty with North Korea, calling again on Moscow to stop its “illegal cooperation” with Pyongyang.
A widening conflict
Under its conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea has signed up to US-led sanctions against the Kremlin and provided humanitarian aid and non-lethal assistance to Ukraine.
This week, media reports said the South was considering sending officials to Ukraine to offer intelligence on North Korean battlefield tactics and take part in interrogations of captured North Korean troops.
While the South is a major arms exporter – the ninth biggest in the world with sales worth $14bn last year – it has a longstanding policy of not providing weapons to countries that are engaged in conflict. That includes Ukraine.
But the deployment of North Korean troops is adding to pressure on Yoon to lift the restriction – a move that would have to overcome legal and political obstacles to become a reality.
Yoon has warned that arming Ukrainian forces is an option, telling reporters this week that the country will “not sit idle” while the North “threatens global security”.
“While we have maintained our principle of not directly supplying lethal weapons, we can also review our stance more flexibly, depending on the level of North Korean military activities,” he said.
The appetite in Seoul for more robust support for Ukraine is growing, even if it raises the prospect of South Korean weapons being used to kill North Korean soldiers in a war taking place thousands of miles away.
“The big question is whether Seoul will relax restrictions on direct military aid,” said Euan Graham, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “However, this would require constitutional change in some cases, so is far from straightforward.”
Kim agreed to deploy his troops for “cynical transactional purposes, rather than shared strategic interests”, Graham added. “Nonetheless, this is a remarkable turn of events, given that even Ukraine’s neighbour Belarus has stayed out of a direct combat role.”
Seven decades after their three-year conflict ended in a truce and the creation of the world’s most heavily armed border, North and South Korea are fighting a proxy war in Europe, according to Ramon Pacheco Pardo, professor of international relations at King’s College London.
“The South is already indirectly providing military assistance to Ukraine [by backfilling artillery shells it sells to Kyiv’s allies that are then shipped to Ukraine] and the North is directly supplying Russia.
“And both the South and the North are gaining valuable information from the war. Were Seoul to directly transfer lethal weapons to Kyiv, this would only emphasise that the two Koreas are engaged in a proxy war.”
A closer relationship with Russia
There are doubts over how effective North Korean soldiers would be in combat given their lack of battlefield experience. But frontline action in Ukraine would be a rare opportunity for Kim to gauge how members of his million-strong army deal with real warfare.
Fighting in Ukraine would enable North Korea to test the abilities of both its soldiers and weapons, said Gabriel Jonsson, associate professor of Korean studies at Stockholm University.
“North Korea can also gain income and assistance to its missile and nuclear programmes from Russia,” Jonsson said, adding that it would enable the North’s propaganda machine to claim, however fancifully, that its military might is a match for that of the US.
Kim’s decision to so closely align himself with Putin will only boost the North’s sanctions-busting nuclear weapons programme – and that is bad news for the South, where some have called for their country to develop its own nuclear weapons.
“North Korea’s forces only have one mission: to fight and die for Russia and make Kim Jong-un billions of dollars in the process, ensuring Pyongyang has more than enough cash to evade sanctions and never give up its nuclear weapons,” said Harry Kazianis, senior director of national security affairs at the Center for the National Interest in Washington.
“The reality is that the longer the war in Ukraine goes on, the more forces Putin will need from North Korea, only making the Kim family stronger by the day and filling the regime’s bank accounts.”
