North Korea Is Learning How to Fight a Modern War in Ukraine
Key Points and Summary
-At a major defense expo in Poland, the war in Ukraine is casting a long shadow, with a particular focus on the alarming role of North Korean troops.
-Ukrainian sources on the front lines report that while initially inexperienced, North Korean soldiers are rapidly adapting, learning how to counter drones and fight a modern war.
-This battlefield evolution is a grave concern for South Korea, whose defense experts warn that Russia is paying for North Korea’s aid not just with cash, but with advanced military technology that will dramatically improve Pyongyang’s own missile and nuclear programs.
North Korea and the Ukraine War: A Frightening Combination
Kielce, Poland – There are almost no defense firms – either Polish or foreign – exhibiting at this year’s Międzynarodowy Salon Przemysłu Obronnego (International Defence Industry Exhibition or MSPO) that are not showing or discussing their products in a manner that includes some discussion of the war in Ukraine.
For most of the companies, their approach to exhibiting their products is to show either how their weapon system has performed so far in theatre, or how it might be used to significant effect if they were in use on the battlefield today.
But for others – both companies and individuals – their approach to this war is more than just a marketing exercise.
This expo is their chance to convey what they are seeing – based on their experience – of the actions by the Russian forces in the conflict.
Shahed Drone from Ukraine. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
More significantly, they are issuing warnings about what they see as potential outcomes if the war continues along its current trajectory.
One of the less-discussed aspects of the war is that Russian forces are not making significant gains on the battlefield.
Those who have been following the developments in Ukraine point out that Russia’s forces have advanced an average of only 50 meters per day in areas like Kharkiv, which is close to the border with Russia.
The Ukraine conflict is often compared to the stalemate dynamic that characterized World War I trench warfare.
But the rate of advance of Putin’s forces is even slower than during that over-the-top era of high casualties and almost no ground gained as a consequence.
During the Somme offensive in World War I, French and British forces advanced an average of 80 meters per day.
These anemic numbers are why there have been multiple articles written this year that assess how many more years and how many millions more troops it would cost Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to take the remainder of the Ukrainian territory that he covets.
The Horror of North Korean Assaults
Ukrainian defense company representatives at MSPO, with extensive experience on the front lines, who spoke to National Security Journal, revealed just how horrific the assault from the “shock troops” from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has turned out to be.
Lancet Drone. Image Credit: Russian State Media.
Some say the effectiveness of these troops has been debatable.
Even though they come from an extensively militarized society, the DPRK units have no real combat experience, which reduces their utility.
Reports on the North Korean units are uneven. Still, Ukrainians who were interviewed in other publications earlier in the year stated that these soldiers were “disciplined, in good shape, and adept with weapons.”
Ukraine sources have described these DPRK forces as being wasted by being thrown into combat in waves of infantry assaults.
The training that they have had rarely has any utility in these assaults, and all they do is end up running up very high casualty rates.
North Korean Soldiers Have Adapted in the Ukraine War
What has changed in more recent months is that, according to a Ukrainian source we spoke with today, the North Korean troops that at one time had little experience in drone warfare have since adapted and are showing how much more effective they can be.
“These North Koreans have – among other things – figured out how to place their machine guns so that they can shoot down our drones as they approach them – to try and wipe out or at least diminish the drone threat to them,” he said. “They are learning and changing their tactics in a way that is scary – because they are learning from the Russians and the Russians are learning from them.”
T-90M Russian Army. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
His observations echo those of a Ukrainian commander interviewed back in June who described the North Korean units as having transitioned from “using World War II tactics to managing on the battlefield with drones,” said the commander of the 225th Separate Assault Brigade. And they learned very quickly.”
‘This Will Come Back to Haunt Us More Than Anyone’
But South Korean defense experts from the companies exhibiting at MSPO this year state that the combination of all the payback for what North Korea is getting from Russia for its participation in the war in Ukraine is a grave threat to them.
“It is not just all the money that Putin is paying [DPRK leader] Kim Jong Un that concerns people like us,” said one of the South Korean representatives.
“The millions and millions that Kim is getting for his soldiers and artillery rounds he sends to Russia that he can pour into his nuclear and ballistic missile programs is one issue.”
“The more serious concern now is all of the military technology and design expertise Kim is going to be receiving from Russia,” said one of the officials we spoke to. “This will permit him to design a missile that actually works – one that can actually hit a target. The nuclear weapons he has so far will be improved. And this is all going to be just across the border from us. It is a bad situation that could get worse than we can even imagine.”
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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Off-CNN
September 2, 2025 at 9:17 pm
It’s extremely easy and even profitable to believe in ukro propaganda, but the fact is the nazis were kicked out of kursk.
That’s a fact that can’t be overturned or doubted. At all.
North Korean troops aren’t the fat-laden troops typically found in western armies, including the famed ukro Nazi battalions.
They’re lean and mean, generally skilled in martial arts and physically possess sharp reflexes. Including eye-brain-muscle coordination.
Not the cognitive-challenged troops of many western military formations. Anyone still able to recall Abu ghraib.
They are good AT THAT.
waco
September 3, 2025 at 3:57 am
While north Korea is adapting itself to the new-type warfare in eastern Ukraine, what about china.
China has been slow, too slow, hampered by unnecessary economic worries energetically stirred up by western media, in particular, the dreaded brit-based Reuters.
Reuters is a very long-established poisonous organization, with close links to US state Dept and deep state.
China has failed to see beyond the tree or the trees planted by Reuters and co, and not recognizing the terrible danger posed by trump, Rubio and hegseth.
The trio stoutly aided by NATO and also the EU, & Japan & Australia.
To confront them, china must get rid of xi jinping, who’s wasting a very massive massive nassive sum of money stupidly pursuing a stupid super mega embassy in UK, and instead build a fleet of giant aircraft landing platforms.
Those craft could then be stationed in the southern Pacific, perhaps near Chile, and armed with VLS cells.
Those VLS cells could be equipped with df-5c rockets that are capable of flying up northward across the isthmus of panama.
That capability will compel the trio of trump, Rubio and hegseth plus their Cronies to think TWICE before embarking on a venezuela-type high seas piracy action.
Swamplaw Yankee
September 3, 2025 at 4:10 am
Fact: in 2014 the POTUS Obama’s Democrat Cabal unilaterally green lit the loss of NATO control of Ukraine’s Crimean soil, families and Black/Azov Sea jurisdictional zones to the WEST’s greatest prime evil cold war enemy, tsarling Putin. The marxist Cabal insiders were ecstatic to covertly betray the WEST + that their blood brothers in Moscow were finally able to break out of the Cold war boundary the WEST had spent trillions in maintaining.
The POTUS Obama was also unilaterally green lighting the re-start of the 1000 year old GenOcide of Ukrainians that the Democrat Cabal knew full well would result in Putin’s “Little green groomer” military immediately mass abducting little Ukrainian children for Putin’s ethnic deep genetic need for “Lolita” packages.
The Yankee MSM made sure to avoid any mention of the orc russkie peasant ancient slaver-sex trader history in the Genocide of Ukrainians. Putin’s forbears in this muscovite centuries old “HARVEST” of Ukrainian Children in the Ukrainian hinterlands were the tangible thread that the MSM decided to avoid disclosing at any time.
POTUS Obama’s Democrat Cabal firmly kept their mouth’s shut about the quick immediate “HARVEST” of little children by russian speaking traitors as the orcs knew where Ukrainians lived and “BASEMENT BUTCHERED” parents. The traitors promptly traded “Lolita” packages to their orc masters who poured across Ukraine’s borders in inner genetic thirst of deviancy and satiation with little children.
Whatever location, say Iloviask, as Ukrainian Father Volunteers rushed to defend their children from Putin’s mass abductors, local russian speakers traitors reveled in the immediate assistance of mainline military russian sex traders able to trade Moscow tanks, trucks, and ammo for Ukrainian “Lolita” packages.
The Vassal Putin was never at all restrained by either Obama or the muslim PRC CCP. Today, the muslim PRC CCP Xi regime still controls it’s vassal state Russia with huge covert funding and overall military strategy.
While Yankee op-ed screeches away about muslim North Korean troops inside Ukraine, the agit-prop is that the PRC CCP Xi regime is 100% not connected.
The Financial connection is never revealed in detail or as a generality. Why did the Korean war go so badly for the Yankee brain trust? Well, good question. Is there an expert ready to answer it?
The Covert funding from the PRC CCP spreads about the “Axis of Gulag states”! As MAGA POTUS Trumpkins shows off his incapacity, MAGA allows US firms to shovel in US cash from Walmart, Target, inside China as fast as possible. The Xi regime immediately has vast cash income to make up the trillions that vassal Putin has as his deficit. Notice, that Yankee Detective Tucker was so very able to find + film vast numbers of well stocked stores in Moscow. No Leningrad type starvation during war for muscovites in 2025.
Yes, the muslim Xi regime has a military intelligence entranced with Ukrainian Fathers. The muslim PRC CCP is bored with the USA as their internal spy agents penetrate the DNI, et al alphabet agencies. The Xi regime steals US technology regularly with pats on the head from Xi lover MAGA Trumpkins.
The muslim Xi regime wants the Genocide of Ukrainians to continue. What vassal Putin wants is so very immaterial to Xi’s regime!
Muslim Xi’s regime needs the innovative ability of Ukrainian Fathers to show up, so the Muslim Xi regime can observe and steal the innovations asap. The Muslim Xi challenge is to get traitors and spies into Ukraine to monitor + steal these innovations.
There is no need for Xi to stop the Genocide of Ukrainians as that includes the centuries old tradition of mass abduction of little Ukrainian children. If that ancient sex trade in Ukrainians motivates Putin’s ethnic russkies for centuries past, then the muslim Xi regime is not going to get moral about saving little Christian Ukrainians from russkie peasant cultural Genocide.
Yeah, the muslim PRC CCP Xi regime is learning how to steal innovation in fighting a modern Genocide.
Yeah, the MAGA POTUS Trumpkins regime is learning how to quietly submit to the innovative technology evolving in every Ukrainian home that the Xi regime drones/missiles destroy.
MAGA Trumpkins moronic Cabal thinks it is cute, smart to have the USA sit on it’s ass, obey Putin’s every redline, keep US boots far away, off Ukrainian soil, just so the USA remains ignorant and therefore stupid while the muslim Xi regime gets smarter and adroit, becoming the WINNER. -30-
Swamplaw Yankee
September 3, 2025 at 4:44 am
WACO is the NEW BOSS of the US DNI gang of intelligence spooks. What a brain!
For years, the same was the tune here in my posts. Why is the overly populated Mexico never bothered by the Yankee to contribute to NORAD and/or NATO? Why is Central America always full of “revolutionaries” who never demand to go to their destiny in Moscow?
WACO reveals the USA is spending trillions of US tax money protecting MEXICO’s very rich elite from specific missile/drone attack corridors. WACO reveals that even Central America is sucking at free ongoing US tax dollars that protect their countries from the PRC CCP Xi regime high tech. What is their overall F-35 purchase strategy? The op-ed types are suppressing that data (again).
Where are the huge numbers of F-35 air frames that the rich Mexican cartels have funded for defence of Iceland and Greenland? Where are the US Patriots that vehemently demand that Mexico ship the very same amounts of drugs into the PRC of Xi and Putinland? What is this free, free, free eternal US Tax dollars spending on protecting rich Mexico and Central American elite?
WACO needs a high placed job offer from MAGA POTUS Trumpkins asap. Gabbard needs to be promptly replaced ( or, at least co-chaired) with a deep thinker. WACO thinks outside the US thought-box while the inner beltway aquarium and op-ed hacks get muddled with all that REUTERS trash talk.
I see WACO getting a NOBEL peace prize for stabilizing threats to the US and North America in a timely fashion. Go WACO! GO! -30-