By Galina Korol | 2024-11-13

KYIV -- For many of the thousands of North Korean troops reported to have arrived in Russia, it may be their first and last trip outside their dictatorial state, analysts say.

Such "war tourism" was made possible by the comprehensive strategic partnership treaty between Russia and North Korea, which Russian President Vladimir Putin signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a visit to Pyongyang in June.

North Korea ratified the agreement on November 12, a week after Russian lawmakers voted unanimously to ratify the deal, which Putin signed into law November 10.

"It started with North Korea transferring to Russia 3.5 million artillery shells, according to our information," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with South Korean TV posted October 31 on his YouTube channel.

"Russia was using all those millions [of shells] to kill our people," he said. "North Korea also delivered missiles. Now we're talking about a contingent that will be fighting against us."

Reliable figures are hard to come by, but Western intelligence sources say there are around 10,000 North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia, while Kyiv says there are 11,000.

This is the equivalent of current Russian losses in about 10 days of fighting, according to some estimates.

A 'headache' for Russia

How useful the North Korean soldiers will be to Moscow remains to be seen.

Pyongyang's special forces are primarily trained to prevent a coup d'etat at home.

The North Korean army has not fought a war since 1953.

"They're a headache for the Russian command," said Oleg Zhdanov, a Soviet and Ukrainian veteran, military analyst and reservist colonel for the Ukrainian general staff.

"The main problem is establishing mutual understanding during combat," he told Kontur, raising a series of questions:

"How do you command those troops, and who is going to command them? If it's their commander, how do you assign him the mission, how do you explain to him that you can't take even one step backward, that you need to move forward without stopping, casualties be damned? How do you drum those concepts into the head of that North Korean commander?"

Ukrainian media outlets last week reported the first incidents of combat between Ukrainian and North Korean forces.

"At the moment this doesn't involve large bodies of troops, but the first confrontations have indeed occurred," Suspilne reported November 5, quoting an anonymous source in Ukrainian intelligence.

Zelenskyy confirmed this information.

"Eleven thousand North Korean soldiers ... are currently present on the territory of the Russian Federation ... on the north of our country in the Kursk region," Zelenskyy said November 7 in Budapest.

"Some of these troops have already taken part in hostilities against the Ukrainian military. Yes, there are already losses; this is a fact."

However, Zelenskyy did not say exactly when or under what circumstances this combat took place, nor did he quantify the North Korean losses.

Test battles

What the Russian military leadership is now doing with the North Koreans could be called test battles, said Zhdanov.

"They're taking a small number of soldiers -- a small unit as I understand it, perhaps up to a platoon -- and trying to use them in combat," he said.

The outcome of those battles may then dictate the future roles of these North Korean "war tourists" in the Russian army.

"The Russian commanders are now determining that if they can set up a system to command the military personnel on the battlefield, they'll be able to put them in assault units and use them as cannon fodder," Zhdanov said.

Andriy Kovalenko, director of the Center for Countering Disinformation under Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, agreed with this interpretation of the missions of the combatants dispatched from Pyongyang to Russia.

"[The North Korean service members] will gradually be put into action as part of what we can call training for actual war, so that they can then replace Russians in certain areas," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) quoted Kovalenko as saying on November 7.

"Their main mission is to participate in the so-called Russian offensive on Sudzha," he said, referring to a town in Kursk province held by the Ukrainians.

'Nothing to lose'

Potential evidence of this was reported October 31, when the Kushnar_media Telegram channel posted a video purporting to show a seriously wounded North Korean prisoner of war.

The soldier said his unit was destroyed near Kursk during a failed attempt to attack Ukrainian positions.

"There were about 40 of us, but all are dead. I am left alone. I have nothing to lose," the wounded man said.

Kontur was unable to verify the authenticity of the video or identify the man in it.

However, the video could be authentic, according to Ukrainian reservist colonel Victor Kevlyuk, an analyst at the Center for Defense Strategies.

"People who understand Korean say that the man is speaking a North Korean dialect and the visuals coincide with his speech," he told Kontur.