- North Korea strengthened its defense ties with Russia through a new security pact last month.
- The Pentagon said it would “monitor” the possibility of North Korea sending troops to Russia.
- Experts told BI that if troops are deployed, it will depend on the number of troops, not their effectiveness.
Speculation is growing that North Korea may send troops to Ukraine.
Last month, Russia and North Korea The agreement was signed They agree to provide mutual military assistance if the other side comes under attack.
As part of the agreement, North Korea plans to send construction and engineering troops to occupied Ukraine later this month to carry out reconstruction work, South Korea's Chosun TV reported, citing unnamed South Korean government officials.
There has been no official confirmation so far, but speculation grew after a reporter at a Pentagon press conference late last month said that North Korea's Central Military Commission had announced that it would join forces with Russian forces.
(The Institute for War Studies questioned the reporter's claim, saying it had found no such statements from North Korea.)
In response, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said the possibility of North Korea sending troops to Russia was “certainly something we'd be monitoring.”
At this point, the possibility of North Korean soldiers being sent to Ukraine remains speculative and unlikely, experts told Business Insider.
But if that were to happen, they said, the main advantage Russia would gain from it would be the numbers of North Korean soldiers, not their effectiveness.
“North Korea has a large military force of 1.3 million people,” Edward Howell, a Korea Foundation research fellow at Chatham House's Asia Pacific Programme, told BI.
“But the quality of North Korea's conventional weapons, arms and soldiers themselves is much weaker,” he said.
John Hardy, deputy director of the Russia program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said even if the reports were true, it was unlikely that the North Korean deployment would have a “significant” impact on the Ukrainian battlefield.
One of the largest armies, but not the most effective
North Korea has the world's fourth largest military, estimated at around 1.2 million troops.
But while the North Korean People's Army is “well trained” and “highly motivated,” it has not seen combat for decades, Evans Revere said. Senior Advisor to the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global consulting firm.
Their last actual combat was during the Korean War, which ended in 1953.
Libya, who served as acting undersecretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs under President George W. Bush, said that raises questions about how his country's military would fare in combat against “an agile, determined, experienced and resilient Ukrainian military.”
He said South Korea's military drills are focused on fighting two adversaries, the United States and South Korea, and added that its weapons “include many what the U.S. military calls 'outdated systems,' particularly aircraft, tanks and artillery.”
“This could be problematic on the Ukrainian battlefield,” he said.
North Korea is estimated to have 50 nuclear warheads as of January 2024, but its weapons stockpile is considered outdated and unreliable, experts said.
This means it will take North Korean soldiers some time to adapt to the new weaponry, Bruce Bennett, a defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, told BI.
This will likely encourage North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to send only “politically credible” forces to support Russia, he said.
“It's unclear whether Russia would provide North Korea with the modern weapons it needs – better tanks, artillery, communications and electronic warfare,” Bennett said, adding that Kim Jong Un would probably insist on it.
Wallace Gregson, a former U.S. Marine officer and former assistant secretary of defense for Asia-Pacific security affairs, said the effectiveness of North Korea's military will depend on how it receives food, fuel and medical support, as well as its command relationship with Russia.
“Given what we know about the nutritional situation in North Korea, even the military may have problems,” he told BI.
Mr Howell of Chatham House was more forthright.
“If North Korea were to send troops to support a Russian war, it would be simply because of numbers, not the effectiveness of its military forces,” he said.
Deployment shouldn't be ruled out entirely
According to Benjamin Young, assistant professor of homeland security and emergency preparedness at Virginia Commonwealth University: Kim Jong Un will not send troops “thousands of miles to Europe to die pointlessly on the front lines for another country.”
Young, author of “Guns, Guerrillas and Great Leaders: North Korea and the Third World,” said that if North Korean troops were deployed, “they would likely play a supporting role in terms of building fortifications and structures.”
“It may also be useful for repairing tanks, weapons systems and other weapons,” he added.
Hardy, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said “we'll have to wait and see” whether the reports are true and whether a deployment will actually take place.
But if that were to happen, he added, North Korean soldiers might “simply” be helping to rebuild destroyed cities like Mariupol.
But other experts took a different view.
RAND's Bennett said he thought it was “quite likely” that North Korea would send troops to Ukraine, but declined to provide further details.
However, Howell said the possibility of any transfer of personnel, whether soldiers or support personnel, should not be ruled out, given the recent strengthening of defense ties between Russia and North Korea.
But, he added, “It's important to remember that at this point, these rumours are merely speculation.”
