They are taking casualties, but there’s no doubt that the arrival of thousands of fresh North Korean troops is a boon to the Kremlin’s prospects.
At least that’s the assessment of the U.S. government, according to Major General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s spokesman, who told the press on Monday that the North Korean force sent to Russia over the course of the fall entered large-scale combat operations last week.
Western intelligence services have estimated that something like 10,000 North Koreans have deployed to Russia’s Kursk oblast — the Russian province that was partially overrun by the Ukrainian army in a surprise attack in August. The Ukrainians still hold a couple hundred square miles of Russian territory around Kursk, but they have been slowly driven back toward the border as tens of thousands of Russian and, now, North Korean troops have gone on the offensive in recent months.
Did Vladimir Putin secure Kim Jong-un’s help and thousands of his men — but on the condition that the North Koreans would only be used in Russia proper? That’s been speculated, but it’s hard to come to any conclusions at this point. So far, however, neither the U.S. government nor the Ukrainians have had any indication that the North Koreans have deployed to other parts of the front or in Ukraine itself.
But Ryder has said that the Ukrainian government possesses intelligence “suggesting their use could extend to other parts of the front line” in the future, and President Zelensky announced in a video message on Monday that the North Koreans have been spotted in the Kursk area but “so far, only there.” What that means exactly, and how the Ukrainians know that information, is an open question.
Whatever their ultimate purpose, the sudden arrival of thousands of fresh North Korean troops is certainly a boon to the Kremlin’s prospects. This nearly three-year-old war’s high casualty rates have caused both sides to struggle to find enough men to send to front-line infantry formations. And now the Russians have an ally willing to commit manpower to their cause. Indeed, it’s not entirely a coincidence that the Russians have been on the front foot for several months now, as they have pushed a depleted Ukrainian army back along several stretches of the front.
None of this, of course, is without cost to the North Korean expeditionary forces. Twitter and Telegram are full of (unconfirmed) Ukrainian footage purporting to show the North Koreans taking casualties. One video that has made the rounds shows what appears to be a mass of North Korean assault infantry hit by a withering cluster-munitions strike. Another piece of drone video footage that has been spread widely by Ukrainian media appears to show North Korean soldiers — with distinctive East Asian facial features — dug into a snowy trench line.
As neither the Kremlin nor Pyongyang have ever shown much inclination to care about the fate of their men, there’s no doubt that more North Koreans will die in this war. Indeed, things already may not be going very well. As the Institute for the Study of War wrote in its daily report yesterday:
North Korean forces reportedly continue to sustain high casualties during combat operations in Kursk Oblast. Ukrainian Center for Disinformation Head Andriy Kovalenko stated on December 16 that Russian forces send North Korean forces into battle without armored vehicle support and are sending North Korean infantry on multi-pronged attritional assaults along narrow fronts. Kovalenko stated that Russia is trying to prevent news of North Korean failures and high casualty rates from spreading and is instead promoting narratives about North Korean battlefield successes.
The question for Americans, at least for now, is: What did Putin have to promise Kim to win his help? There has been much speculation that the North Koreans have traded this deployment for advanced missile technology that the Russians can provide. Or, perhaps, Kim saw the advantage in having his army bloodied while earning combat experience (the North Koreans have not fought a war since the end of major hostilities on the Korean Peninsula in 1953).
The North Koreans shouldn’t be inordinately feared — their inexperience in combat, the inherent communications problems and inefficiencies that will come with working with their Russian allies, and poor tactics and leadership will almost certainly lead to exorbitant casualties and tough lessons. But those tough lessons can be applied to build a better, stronger version of North Korean arms in the future. And no one should doubt the danger to us of our enemies’ alliances growing closer and the destabilizing effects of expeditionary warfare on the Eurasian continent.