North Korean troops in Russia: The first test of the Russia-North Korea alliance

Reports are circulating that North Korea is sending troops to Russian-occupied Donbas, and some might have even been killed and wounded.

The Washington Post, quoting a Ukrainian intelligence official, reported that “several thousand” North Korean infantry solders are receiving training in Russia and they could be deployed to the front line in Ukraine by the end of 2024. A Western diplomat told the Kyiv Independent that North Korea has sent 10,000 soldiers to Russia. The South Korean government concurred that there is a high possibility of North Korea sending troops to Russia due to the defence pact recently inked by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s chairman Kim Jong-un in June.

Russia, for its part, has denied the accusation.

Even before the reinvigoration of an alliance earlier this year, North Korea has sent labourers to Russia since 2022 to help with reconstruction efforts related to the conflict. Weapons have also been sent. If the reports of North Korean troops in Russia are correct, it is possible that North Korean military technicians and engineers want to observe the efficiency of their weapons against Western-made arms and assist with maintenance, like they did in Syria in 2018 when they sent ballistic missiles and chemical weapons component to the Syrian government.

Moreover, sending troops would earn cash for the North Korean government, as it is ramping up production of weapons in the fourth quarter to meet Russia’s growing demands.

What matters most would be the degree of troop participation in the conflict, and what responsibility North Korean troops assumed in Russia in the months ahead.

North Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War on North Vietnam’s side offers some clues about the degree of North Korean troops participation in an ally’s conflict. When the United States expanded its war against North Vietnam in 1965, North Korea considered the US aggression against Hanoi as aggression against Pyongyang. It proposed sending ground troops to help Hanoi fight the United States, but North Vietnam turned down the offer due to concerns about its avowed self-reliant path to unification.

Still, Pyongyang and Hanoi reached an agreement in which North Korea would send its pilots to help defend against US air attacks under North Vietnam’s Air Defence Command. Hanoi agreed to supply those pilots with airplanes and technical support. The North Korean pilots would be called “specialists,” and they fought in secrecy.

Besides pilots, North Korea also sent a number of intelligence officers to South Vietnam to observe South Korean troops and to lure them to the communist side. Language barriers prevented North Korea from sending more officers to South Vietnam. North Korea’s logic was straightforward: trying to bog down the United States in Indochina to relieve the military pressure on the Korean peninsula.

North Korean participation in the Vietnam War indicates that Pyongyang has proved willing to send its troops to the front line if it perceives that the stakes were significant enough. Had it not been for Hanoi’s constraint on North Korean sending troops and language barriers, there would have been far more North Korean troops in both North and South Vietnam.

North Korea may decide to up the ante in the Russia-Ukraine war if it believes that doing so can distract the United States from the peninsula. The revival of trilateral US-Japan-South Korea military cooperation might be part of its reasoning, as well as the chance to provide its troops with valuable lessons ahead of potential future wars against adversaries armed with US weapons.

This leaves three potential levels of North Korean troop participation that close observers can use to gauge the cohesion of the Russia-North Korea alliance.

The first level is North Korea only sending engineers and specialist to observe, maintain, and operate North Korea-supplied weapons, with these troops avoiding direct combat.

The second level is North Korean “specialists” participating in combat, but restricting their operations to Russia and not advancing into Russia-occupied Ukraine. Their goal would be to help Moscow defend against surprise cross-border Ukrainian counteroffensives.

The third level is North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian troops on the front line in Ukraine.

The Russia-North Korea defence pact calls for mutual assistance in case of armed invasion, so it would make more sense for North Korea to restrict its operations to inside Russia. North Korea recognised the two Russia-backed breakaway Ukrainian regions in the Donbass to be independent states, so it may not send troops to those regions given the defence pact only covers Russia. If North Korea sends troops to defend the two breakaway regions, that will signal that the scope of the pact is broader than expected.

If the troops decide to wear North Korean military insignia in public, to be spotted by Western intelligence, that could also send a message to Moscow and the international community that Pyongyang is publicly invested in the war against Ukraine and in its alliance with Russia.

A North Korean troop deployment would be the first test of the new Russia-North Korea defence pact. A more cohesive Russia-North Korea alliance and Pyongyang’s growing participation in the war might also explain the relative chill in China-North Korea relations. However, such a deployment might also signal that North Korea is not readying to launch a war against South Korea anytime soon, despite recent tension, given that it is devoting more resources to the Ukrainian front.