By Galina Korol | 2024-11-15

KYIV -- The North Korean troops engaging in combat operations alongside Russian forces on the border with Ukraine are gaining battle experience.

But at what cost, analysts wonder.

Since late October, at least 10,000 North Korean troops have been fighting in Kursk province, Russia, where Ukrainian troops have held fast after launching a surprise offensive in August.

For Russia, the North Koreans help replenish ranks hit by staggering casualties -- by some estimates 1,000 per day.

For North Korea, sending its troops into Kursk province is the only way to give them real combat experience.

With the exception of a fighter squadron of about 200 pilots who fought in the Vietnam War between 1967-1968, North Korean troops have not seen battle since 1953.

Dictatorships unite

The deployment of North Koreans against Ukraine marks a new chapter in military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang.

With North Korean casualties already reported, and the risk of defection high, the experience gained might not be worth the cost for Pyongyang.

A plethora of issues still need working out, analysts say.

Will the North Koreans deploy rank-and-file soldiers as well as command structures? Will they be autonomous or integrated into Russian units? For what tasks? Can Russians and North Koreans jointly wage a war that depends on translators?

"Since North Korea is isolated from peacekeeping operations and from any type of large-scale joint exercises with the world's major countries, the only way to gain experience is ... in Russia in the war against Ukraine," said Victor Kevlyuk, a reservist Ukrainian colonel and analyst at the Center for Defense Strategies.

"A foreign unit that doesn't adhere to the standards of the country that's asked it to carry out a joint mission can't carry out those kinds of missions," he told Kontur.

The two armies have different staff processes, he noted.

Such divergences will affect fighting, said Mykhailo Zhirokhov, a military scholar, historian and author specializing in the history of local 20th-century conflicts.

"The Ukrainian army's firepower is now quite substantial, and we're seeing through official reports how much the Russians are losing in a day, a week and a month," he told Kontur.

"Consequently, these units that don't have combat experience, don't understand the situation, don't understand their own tactics or the tactics of our troops will suffer tremendous losses," he said.

"We're dealing with a dictatorship with an epicenter in Moscow and an epicenter in Pyongyang. They don't care how many people come back or if they come back at all," Kevlyuk added.

Lost in translation

Communication is one of the main challenges, analysts say.

"Ukrainian intelligence has stated that the North Koreans arrived in Russia with 500 officers and three generals," Ivan Klyszcz, a research fellow at the International Center for Defense and Security in Estonia, told AFP.

"This could facilitate communication if the Russian and North Korean generals manage to work together, but there are too many unknowns at this stage to be conclusive," he said.

North Koreans who do not understand orders in Russian would be very difficult to command in battle.

"When this unit is standing in formation and there's an interpreter next to the Russian commander who's going to be directing them, everything is fine," said Oleg Zhdanov, a Soviet and Ukrainian veteran, military analyst and reservist colonel for the Ukrainian general staff.

"But when they take up combat positions and they're separated by up to 10 meters, the command system crumbles," he told Kontur.

The language barrier is working against North Koreans on the battlefield, Ukrainian combatants confirm.

"The ... language problem will be the North Koreans' downfall," said a Ukrainian service member with the code name Cedar.

Cedar said told independent news agency Newsader he had encountered North Koreans on the battlefield in Kursk province.

"I would say that they don't know how to fight," Cedar said in the interview, which was posted on YouTube on November 8.

"The North Koreans are just cannon fodder. They came here, and they were told in Korean, go there. And as they were taught to do, they lined up and they went to attack," Cedar said.

Collective punishment

It is "highly likely" that the North Koreans who have ended up in this Russian war will be inclined to defect, Hyunseung Lee, a North Korean veteran and defector, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in a November 8 report.

North Korea had never sent its army into combat abroad before, primarily out of fear that soldiers might defect or make unflattering comparisons between foreign armies and their own, AFP reported.

"The regime is worried that soldiers from the isolated country might pick up 'incorrect' ideas," wrote Fyodor Tertitskiy, a researcher at Seoul's Kookmin University.

Mindful of those risks, Pyongyang has taken draconian measures.

"Families of soldiers [who were sent to Russia] have now been relocated to special camps in North Korea," Zhdanov said.

If a North Korean "tries to desert, the family is shot. And [the North Korean soldiers] know about this."

Russian precautions

At the same time, the Russian command reportedly is trying to keep Ukraine from collecting too much evidence of the North Korean fighters.

"It will be hard for us to find proof of their involvement in combat," Zhdanov said.

"This is because when talk started last month about the North Korean troops, there were reports, mainly in Russian sources, that Chief of the General Staff [Valery] Gerasimov had issued an order to troops saying that the first thing they had to do was to make it impossible for North Korean soldiers to defect," he said.

Additionally, Gerasimov ordered Russians to ensure "that no [Ukrainian] sabotage and reconnaissance units ... end up at [North Korean] deployment sites. And another crucial point was that all wounded and killed [North Koreans] must be removed from the battlefield," Zhdanov said.

Kontur was unable to verify the issuance of such an order.

Meanwhile, North Korean "war tourists" could end up falling victim to temptations they had been denied their whole lives, until they ended up fighting in Russia.

Forbidden fruit

"Forbidden fruit" could be a useful weapon in the battle with the aggressor's next onslaught, say analysts.

"They've never seen the internet, never seen a drone; they launch balloons into South Korea," Zhdanov said. "They don't have cell phones. And even the Russian war propagandists have written about how when the North Korean fighters discovered the internet, they got hooked on pornography."

Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times, wrote about this on November 5.

"The North Korean soldiers who have deployed to Russia have never had unfettered access to the internet before. As a result, they are gorging on pornography," Rachman wrote on X.

Not even the prospect of execution, which can be the punishment for looking at pornography in North Korea, has deterred the soldiers.