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SEOUL, South Korea — Projections that North Korean troops deployed to the Russia-Ukraine war would be ill-equipped cannon fodder are evaporating as battlefield reports indicate high motivation, quality training and lavish scales of gear.
Worryingly for the U.S. and its allies backing Kyiv, the estimated 11,000-strong North Korean army contingent has defied high casualties to amass experience in the high-intensity, millennial war that current-generation Western troops lack.
Their deployment thrusts the highly militarized Asian fortress state on the cutting edge of the loose alliance with U.S. adversaries in China, Russia and Iran, a grouping some have dubbed “CRINK” states.
Still, there are uncertainties. The Korean People’s Army troops reportedly have been pulled back from part of the front in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces cling to a sliver of Russian territory seized in a surprise summer operation. Others suggest reinforcements are coming.
The Kyiv Independent reported last week that North Korean troops have pulled back from Kursk’s “zero line.” The newspaper’s source, from Ukraine’s special forces, also noted the quality of the KPA troops.
Predicting that “the break will not last long,” he noted the North Koreans’ “high motivation” and ability “to continue … the offensive despite heavy losses.”
Reports from Seoul and Kyiv suggest that North Korean forces’ pullback from the front lines in Kursk could be an operational break to regroup, recover and reinforce.
“With around four months having passed since the deployment of troops to the war between Russia and Ukraine, [North Korea] is assumed to be accelerating preparations for additional measures and deployment amid multiple casualties and occurrence of prisoners,” South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff reported on Jan. 24.
Pyongyang has the resources to sustain its deployment, with more than 1.1 million men in the ranks. Yang Uk, a security expert at Seoul’s Asan Institute, said its top-tier units — saboteurs, special forces, airborne, marines, rangers — have some 200,000 troops, larger than the entire armies of France, with 118,00, and Britain, with 75,000.
Material reinforcements may be on the way.
On Jan. 22, unconfirmed open-source intelligence reported that Koksan 170 mm self-propelled guns, which can fire farther than Ukraine’s 152 mm and 155 mm tube artillery, were being shipped to Kursk. The same day, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, who heads Kyiv’s defense intelligence agency, told specialist media The War Zone that North Korea was sending more ballistic missiles.
Soldiers appear to be strongly motivated for the fight. Footage shared online by Ukraine showed a wounded and immobilized North Korean killing himself with a grenade when approached by Ukrainian commandos.
The North Koreans are in the crosshairs of Ukraine’s deadliest units, but only two who were wounded in battle have been captured.
“From the Pentagon’s perspective, having North Korean belligerents on the battlefield in Ukraine is an opportunity for deterrence by hitting them hard and denigrating their capabilities,” said Alex Neill, a Singapore-based security expert with Pacific Forum. “By all accounts, they have specifically targeted North Korean troops.”
Some reports say the KPA is a Cold War-era “Soviet style” army, and Gen. Budanov has called them “biological robots.” The North Koreans are displaying an ability to innovate.
Ukrainians say the North Koreans do not flee suicide or direct-drop drones. Instead, one soldier will stand in the open while comrades attempt to shoot down the incoming drone.
Allegations about poor equipment are proving false. Dead North Koreans on the battlefield have been found equipped with new AK12 assault rifles — the latest, fifth-generation weapon in the Kalashnikov series — fitted with optical sights.
In a video posted Tuesday, Ukrainian war correspondent Yuriy Butuzov showed a semiautomatic 12-gauge anti-drone “Vepr” shotgun carried by a North Korean colonel. He said the colonel also wore a helmet, tactical goggles, a flak vest and a pack while carrying a Chinese digital radio, batteries, a flare, two grenades and a brand-new AK12.
“Lavishly equipped,” with nine magazines rather than Russian soldiers’ four or five, he was able to carry so much gear because “the level of physical training of the Koreans is very high,” the correspondent said. All that was missing was a navigation device. The officer relied on two small-scale paper maps.
North Korean officers “personally lead their soldiers, their assault groups, into the attack,” Mr. Butuzov said in front of the corpse. He praised the KPA’s high-speed attacks and effective marksmanship but criticized their dense field formations.
Like other KPA troops, the dead North Korean was found with recovered documents, diaries and letters written in Korea’s Hangul alphabet.
Gaining experience
Western military analysts have focused heavily on North Korea’s losses. They indicate that as many as a quarter of the force are casualties, though others question Kyiv’s reported figures.
Western militaries in recent decades have focused on low-intensity, counterinsurgency operations, very different from the high-intensity, high-tech, high-casualty warfare of Russia and Ukraine.
The North Koreans are shock troops, elite forces like the U.S. Marines traditionally used in high-risk operations.
“The unit that North Korea has [sent] is an assault unit, used to make breakthroughs in enemy lines,” Mr. Yang said. “Inevitably, they are going to have a lot of casualties.”
Authoritarian regimes such as North Korea can focus on objectives over losses without public dissent.
“Nobody can win a battle with zero losses, and it says something when they are willing to lose 50% or more to get the job done,” said Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean general. “Every commander needs to achieve the mission and lower the cost; the exceptions are totalitarian nations. To them, getting the mission done is the thing.”
All this makes Pyongyang, alongside Moscow, the spearhead of the axis of adversaries challenging the U.S. and its Western allies on the global stage.
“The willingness to deploy on foreign soil in somebody else’s war is a show of determination and bravery,” said Mr. Neill. “It offers a prestige opportunity for North Korea within the CRINK and offers them the opportunity to upstage” China’s People’s Liberation Army.
The fighting in Ukraine has shifted from artillery in its first two years to strike drones, playing to the KPA’s strengths: high-tech, low-cost asymmetric warfare.
“For North Korea, this is new exposure, and their guys coming back are going to integrate it,” said Steve Tharp, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel retired in South Korea. “Drones do not cost the same as an F-35, and that is the kind of war the North Koreans want to do. What they are learning in Ukraine is going to be incredibly useful.”
“The best South Korean soldiers had experience from the Vietnam War, but that generation has gone,” said Mr. Yang. “These young North Koreans will go back and will become generals. Their firsthand experience will give them a lot of inspiration.”
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