By Galina Korol and AFP | 2024-11-21

KYIV -- North Korea is continuing to support Russia's war against Ukraine with additional shipments of artillery and rocket launchers following the deployment of troops to the frontlines, AFP reported November 20.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) "has confirmed that the North has shipped 170mm self-propelled artillery and long-range 240mm rocket launchers," South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun, who serves on a parliamentary intelligence committee, said November 20 after an NIS briefing.

Pyongyang has also dispatched additional personnel to maintain and repair the new weapons, as they are not part of Russia's conventional arsenal, he added, without providing details.

Some of the roughly 11,000 North Korean soldiers deployed in Kursk province, Russia, "have engaged in combat," Lee said, according to the NIS.

"They have been assigned to Russia's airborne brigade and marine corps, undergoing tactical and response training," he said.

As a result, the NIS believes that "casualties are occurring" among the North Koreans, Lee said.

Neither Pyongyang nor Moscow has confirmed the presence of North Korean troops in Russia.

Difficult for China to watch

Beijing officials are restrained and terse in public when talk turns to how Russia has drawn North Korea into the war it unleashed in Ukraine.

"Russia and North Korea are two independent and sovereign states, so the development of their bilateral relations is exclusively the affair of these two countries," Lin Jian, the spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, said at a briefing, Ukraine's national news agency Ukrinform reported November 1.

However, Lin omitted a reason for China to be offended: it has had a special relationship with North Korea for more than 70 years, dating back to the Korean War, when the Chinese fought on North Korea's side.

Beijing has long been Pyongyang's main ally, giving North Korean leader Kim Jong Un trade, diplomatic and military assistance.

"China has no military alliances with anyone, with one exception: North Korea," said Volodymyr Holovko, a historian and senior researcher at the Institute of History of Ukraine and director of the Center for Political Analysis.

"In 1961 the two countries signed an agreement in which China guarantees military aid in the event of an aggression against North Korea by third countries," he told Kontur.

"And here, the only country that China has a military alliance with is being pulled into the war," Holovko said. "On top of that, we know that South Korea doesn't like this either. And all of this puts China in a position where it has to make a very difficult choice."

Loss of influence

Although China dwarfs both Russia and North Korea economically and they both need it more than it needs them, it may be facing a major dilemma right now.

"China is clearly confronted with the reality that it is losing influence over Pyongyang, while Russia is gaining influence," Eric Ballbach, the Korea Foundation fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in a story published November 3.

During the past year Kim has made a drastic shift, paying more attention to Russia than to China, the WSJ reported.

"Kim has sent Putin more than 10 leader-to-leader letters this year, triple the volume of his correspondence with Xi [Jinping of China]," it added.

Furthermore, Russians are allowed to vacation in North Korea, while Chinese may not.

And Putin and Kim can each offer the other something that Beijing cannot.

"Russia needs manpower and munitions to win the war with Ukraine; Pyongyang needs weaponry know-how," the WSJ reported.

However, this closer relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang could end up destabilizing the Korean peninsula as a result.

China is completely aware of that risk, analysts say.

"I think China is now doing all it can to preserve the balance," said Stanislav Zhelikhovsky, a political analyst and international relations scholar in Kyiv.

"China doesn't benefit if Russia completely gains the upper hand in the war [in Ukraine] and frees itself from the pressure of sanctions," he said. "[China] needs Russia to be in the resource and ideological position it's in now."

'A Russian game'

Moscow's ill-thought-out invasion of Ukraine is what drove Russia into its uncomfortable dependence on China.

"China was gaining leverage against Russia. And of course Russia didn't like that, and it discovered that it could offset China's influence by cooperating with North Korea," Holovko said.

"This is absolutely a Russian game," he said. "In my opinion, it's the agreement between Russia and North Korea [to send North Korean troops to Ukraine] that they may have presented to China as a fait accompli."

In such a scenario, both participants -- Russia and North Korea -- get some extras.

"There's talk that Kim is insisting on expanding the contingent [namely, sending more North Korean troops to Russia]," said Victor Kevlyuk, an analyst at the Center for Defense Strategies and a Ukrainian reservist colonel.

"The fact is that Russia paid off North Korea with technology -- rumor has it, missile and nuclear technology in particular," he told Kontur.

Moreover, North Korean troops could become a bargaining chip during future talks on having Russia end its war in Ukraine, say analysts.

Concretely, the message would be: if you want to escalate, send North Koreans into battle on Ukrainian territory; if you want to ease tension, move those soldiers from Kursk province deep into the interior of Russia and then send them back to North Korea.

"If the global community has a wishy-washy response, you can expect to see those troops on Ukraine's internationally recognized territory, but if the response is harsher, they might not make it any farther than Kursk province," Holovko said. "This is the subject for a diplomatic fight."