Putin the Desperate: North Korea Is Going to War in Ukraine

The U.S. government and a wide range of media sources have confirmed what Ukraine declared a week ago; North Korean soldiers will become involved in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in substantial numbers. The Department of Defense has reported that up to 12,000 soldiers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) have or will soon deploy to Russia to begin training in preparation for participation in the war against Ukraine. These troops will augment the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) support for Russia, which has already included munitions, equipment, and political influence. There is no doubt that this is bad news for Ukraine’s war effort, but it also holds significant dangers for both Russia and North Korea. The former now looks desperate to fill out its armies, while the latter is risking a level of international commitment it has largely avoided for almost seventy years.

North Korea Enters the Ukraine War: Implications

North Korea’s commitment to the Russian war effort probably eliminates any possibility that Russia will be forced to end the conflict because of manpower shortages.

Russia has already managed to achieve a substantial manpower advantage at the front, mainly because of mobilization problems in Ukraine. Recent heavy losses in the Donbas have brought Russia’s manpower resilience into question, but even if Moscow cannot rely on Pyongyang for an endless supply of soldiers, even this modest-sized deployment puts a severe dent in Western and Ukrainian hopes that Russia will simply run out of soldiers.

Unknowns

There remains much that we do not know. Will North Korean soldiers serve in combat roles, or primarily in support roles?  Will they fight in their own formations, or will they be used as replacements in already-existing Russian units?

What kind of equipment will North Korean troops employ?

How effectively will soldiers of the KPA, a force that has seen little-to-no combat since the 1950s, fight?  Can North Korean soldiers adapt to the high-tech reality of drone warfare on the Donbas front?

Will Russia respect the international boundary between Russia and Ukraine in its deployment of North Koreans? How will North Korea react when its soldiers are killed or captured in Russian service?

The overall impact of North Korea’s intervention will depend on how these questions get answered. Russia will benefit from the availability of warm bodies. Still, the degree of that benefit will vary considerably based on how the troops are used, how they perform in their assigned duties, and how much stomach North Korea has for combat losses.

Dangers for Russia

There are significant dangers for both parties in this arrangement. Russian officials cannot be unaware that their apparent need to depend on small, backward North Korea for men and munitions represents a humiliation on the world stage. It also ties Russian policy to the mercurial Kim regime, a fate that Russia and China have tried to avoid over the past two decades.

Moreover, the North Korean troops may be more trouble than they’re worth. There are many logistical problems associated with the integration of operations with an allied force, and neither Russia nor North Korea has any recent experience in resolving these problems. Russian and North Korean equipment should be broadly compatible (Russians originally designed most of the KPA’s equipment, and Russia has been using North Korean weapons during the war) but there will still be differences in maintenance procedures and priorities, as well as differences in combat doctrine. Food will present an underrated problem. The Russian palate is not the North Korean palate, and North Korean soldiers are unaccustomed to the Russian Army’s nutritional strategy. Although this could be a good thing (North Korean soldiers are malnourished in the same fashion as the North Korean citizenry) it could take time to adapt. It sounds absurdly trivial, but complaints about the nature and availability of food are among the most common causes of mutinies in the armed forces.

The KPA is, broadly speaking, a Soviet-style army with Soviet-style training and procedures. The Russian Army has Soviet roots but has also evolved away from this foundation over the past three decades, especially in the past three years. North Korean soldiers should be able to fight in Russian formations, and the Russians will likely figure out ways to use North Korean formations as they become available. However, the delegation of command to foreign officers is invariably fraught from both professional and diplomatic standpoints. North Korean soldiers have only a mercenary (they are reported to be paid $2000/month) interest in this war, and it is not at all difficult to envision conflicts between Russian and North Korean personnel.

North Korea Should Be Concerned

There are also perils for North Korea. The deployment of this force could also change the relationship between North Korea’s political leadership and the Korean People’s Army. Russia is an authoritarian state but not a totalitarian one; it does not maintain the controls on the flow of information that North Korea has long taken for granted. North Korea soldiers fighting in Russia and in Ukraine are likely to have much greater access to news and information about the world than they had in North Korea. KPA soldiers will bring this experience back to North Korea, with uncertain political effects.

The Hermit Kingdom earned its name through a sharp closing off of foreign influence; a substantial group of soldiers in a foreign war in a distant land could create a new class of soldiers interested in a different set of political arrangements for governing the DPRK. Moreover, North Korean mothers are no happier than any other mothers about the prospect of their sons dying for uncertain purposes on distant battlefields.

What Will South Korea Say?

There will also be international repercussions. Pyongyang’s decision to commit to the Russia-Ukraine War has damaged the already fraught relationship between North and South Korea, and may encourage Seoul to greater levels of assistance for Kyiv. The precedent for direct intervention in the conflict has now been broken, which could make it easier for countries like Poland or France to put troops on the ground in Ukraine.

The Ukraine War Goes Global

Almost three years in, this war still has surprises left. The impact of North Korea’s intervention is unpredictable. It’s not good for Ukraine, but it might not be of so much benefit to Russia and it could be catastrophic for the Kim Dynasty.

Worst of all, North Korean conscripts who have no reason whatsoever to fight Ukrainians are about to be thrown onto a battlefield distant from their homes and their families, with no real options and no evident way out.

About the Author: Dr. Robert Farley

Dr. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. He received his BS from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph. D. from the University of Washington in 2004. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020), and most recently Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages (Lynne Rienner, 2023). He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. Dr. Farley is also a founder and senior editor of Lawyers, Guns and Money.