Naoko Aoki
North Korea's growing friendship with Russia could yield benefits that empower the Kim Jong-un regime to pursue its strategic objectives more aggressively. To prevent that from happening, the United States needs to signal that its commitment to contribute to South Korea's self-defense remains unchanged. The following discussion assesses the current state of military cooperation between North Korea and Russia and considers options for the United States and South Korea to counter the potential benefits of such cooperation.
The State of Military Cooperation
Pyongyang has been deepening its military cooperation with Moscow since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. This cooperation began with North Korean shipments of artillery shells to Russia later that year and expanded to include the signing of a bilateral mutual defense treaty in 2024. North Korea took yet another step to deepen the partnership in late 2024, when the country began sending troops to Russia to help fight the war in Ukraine, marking an unprecedented level of involvement by Pyongyang in an international conflict.
North Korea is likely to benefit from these developments in both tangible and intangible ways. For example, the troop deployment is giving the Korean People's Army combat experience that it has not had in decades. This is the first time since its founding that the country has sent soldiers to a foreign war on a major scale. While suffering heavy losses—the Ukrainian military believes that North Korea has lost roughly half the 11,000 troops it deployed—North Korean soldiers are reportedly motivated, disciplined, and good at using small arms. Most importantly, they are learning ways to fight in the modern battlefield, including the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.
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