Russia’s war in Ukraine brings weapons bonanza for North Korea

SEOUL – Attack drones directed by artificial intelligence. Tanks with improved electronic warfare systems. A newly built naval destroyer fitted with supersonic cruise missiles. A new air defence system. Air-to-air missiles.

The list of new weapons being touted by North Korea grows almost by the week.

Long-held conventional wisdom had it that North Korea – crippled by international sanctions, natural disasters and the coronavirus pandemic – was unable to upgrade its decrepit Soviet-era military because it lacked the money, fuel, spare parts and technology required.

But its wily leader, Mr Kim Jong Un, found a solution to his country’s decades-old problem. He courted Russia after it invaded Ukraine three years ago and ran into a dire shortage of both troops and conventional weapons, like artillery shells. North Korea had plenty of both to provide.

In return, Moscow has revived a Cold War-era treaty of mutual defence and cooperation with Pyongyang, supplying North Korea not only with fuel and food, but also with materials and technologies to modernise its military, according to South Korean officials and analysts.

They warn that the growing expansion of military cooperation between Russia and North Korea, if left unchecked, could threaten a delicate military balance around the Korean peninsula.

The disintegration of the old Soviet bloc, and the subsequent collapse of North Korea’s economy, created a yawning gap between North and South Korea in their conventional weapons abilities.

To counter that, North Korea in recent decades dedicated its limited resources to developing nuclear warheads and their delivery missiles. Still, the North’s conventional weaponry remained many years behind that of South Korea and the United States, which keeps 28,500 troops in the South.

Russia’s war against Ukraine

has brought Mr Kim a military bonanza.

It gave North Korea opportunities to test its weapons and troops, and to gain valuable insights into modern warfare. Its conventional weapons industry has entered a renaissance, thanks to Russia’s insatiable demand for its artillery shells and missiles, and the military technology flowing the other way, South Korean analysts said.

Mr Kim now has greater ability to destabilise the East Asia region and more leverage should he sit down again with US President Donald Trump or China’s leader Xi Jinping, they said.

“North Korea appears to be entering a strategic golden age,” said Mr Yang Uk, an expert on the North Korean military at The Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.

The alliance has benefited Russian President Vladimir Putin, too. For months, Russian officials concealed the fact that North Korean troops were taking part in efforts to push Ukrainians out of the Kursk region, in western Russia.

It was only at the end of April, when most of the Ukrainian-occupied area had been liberated, that the head of the Russian General Staff said during a public meeting with Mr Putin that North Korean troops “provided significant assistance” to the Russian army there.

Perhaps, more valuably, North Korea sent millions of artillery rounds, as well as many missiles, to Russia. South Korean officials said North Korea was also cooperating with Russia to build drones for both nations.

Russia’s resurgence in the war has given Mr Putin a stronger hand in any potential peace negotiations with Ukraine, and with Mr Trump.

The courtship between Mr Kim and Mr Putin deepened when they met in Russia’s Far East in September 2023. Mr Kim was shown around a Russian space-launch station, an aircraft manufacturing factory, and air force and naval bases, compiling what South Korean analysts called a “bucket list” of Russian technologies he wanted to get his hands on.

In June 2024, Mr Kim invited Mr Putin to Pyongyang, the North’s capital, to sign an alliance treaty. Soon, North Korean troops began streaming into Russia, numbering up to 15,000 in all, according to South Korean intelligence officials

North Korean troops took part in recapturing two villages in the Kursk region, said Mr Dmitri Kuznets, an analyst with news outlet Meduza, which was outlawed by the Kremlin and operates from Latvia. But the true extent of the troops’ contributions has been debated.

Mr Valery Shiryaev, an independent Russian military analyst, said in a post on messaging app Telegram that the participation of North Koreans in real battles was Mr Kim’s idea, so that he could test his army.

“All of them are getting an incredible experience now and will come back as real veterans,” Mr Shiryaev said. “There are no such people in the South Korean army, which undoubtedly fills Kim Jong Un with pride.”

Analysts in South Korea and other Western powers have been tallying Mr Kim’s hardware gains. They have monitored aircraft and ships carrying what appeared to be Russian military technologies to North Korea.

Mr Kim also began more frequently visiting munitions factories and watching weapons tests. He oversaw the test-firing of an anti-aircraft missile system in March amid indications that he was getting badly needed Russian help to modernise the North’s decrepit air defence.

He later inspected reconnaissance and the self-destructing attack drones that used artificial intelligence to hit targets. His prioritising of drones alone would help significantly narrow the gap with South Korea in conventional weapons, analysts said.

In April, Mr Kim and his daughter Kim Ju Ae, widely believed to be his heir, attended the launch of the North’s first naval destroyer, the

Choe Hyon

. He later watched the ship test-fire various missiles.

One of them was called a supersonic cruise missile by North Korea, and it resembled the nuclear-capable Russian cruise missile 3M22 Zircon, said Mr Hong Min, a military expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

While launching the destroyer, Mr Kim reconfirmed that he was also building a nuclear-powered submarine.

Early in May, he visited a tank factory where he said “the armoured weapons of the last century” were being replaced, state media reported. He later inspected expanded and modernised munitions factories, praising a fourfold increase in artillery shells, a key North Korean export to Russia.

Mr Kim also visited an air force unit and watched what looked like a MiG-29 fighter jet hitting a midair target with an air-to-air missile. Such a scene was a far cry from the days when North Korea could rarely get its fighter jets off the ground for lack of fuel and spare parts.

The weapons that North Korea has been brandishing suggest Russian help in developing them, said Mr Lee Sung-joon, a South Korean military spokesman.

South Korean officials usually take North Korea’s claims with a dose of scepticism as Pyongyang has often exaggerated its military achievements for propaganda purposes.

And the pressure that Mr Kim has been exerting on his engineers to complete new weapons quickly has led to mishaps. This past month, when North Korea launched its second destroyer,

the ship capsized

, prompting an angry Mr Kim to

order the arrest of several officials.

But with Russia’s help, North Korea is moving faster to fulfil its ambitious plans for upgrading weaponry announced in 2021, said Mr Choi Yong-hwan, an analyst at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul. Building bigger ships would allow North Korea to start joint naval exercises with Russia around the Korean peninsula, as South Korea has done with the US for decades, he said.

Multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions ban arms trading with North Korea. But military cooperation with Russia “has proved a perfect route for the North to evade sanctions and overcome its technological limits”, said a report from the institute.

There remains doubt over how much sensitive technology Russia is willing to share with North Korea. Pyongyang has repeatedly failed to launch military spy satellites. And to build a nuclear-powered submarine, the country would need a small nuclear reactor.

Such a submarine, which would vastly improve its ability to cross the Pacific and launch a nuclear attack on the US mainland, would be so politically risky that Moscow would be “very, very cautious”, said Mr Doo Jin-ho, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses in Seoul.

But the mere threat it could happen gives Mr Kim more leverage, and North Korean state media has shown part of what it said was a nuclear-powered submarine under construction.

The Korea Institute for National Unification’s Mr Hong said: “It’s the most dangerous weapon North Korea has unveiled so far.” NYTIMES