For years, North Korea’s military has helped its leader, Kim Jong-un, keep control of his people and provide a buffer against the country’s sworn enemy, South Korea. With 1.3 million members, the North’s army is among the world’s largest conventional armed forces.
Now, with more than 11,000 North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces against Ukraine, it’s playing a more prominent role in Mr. Kim’s geopolitical gambit for much-needed cash and diplomatic leverage.
The troops that North Korea deployed are from its “Storm” Corps, special forces that are among the military’s best trained and most heavily indoctrinated. But they were badly prepared for drone attacks and the unfamiliar terrain far from their isolated homeland, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
More than 100 of them were killed and 1,000 others wounded in their first battles, the intelligence agency told South Korean lawmakers in a briefing on Thursday. The agency said a general-ranking officer may be among those killed, according to Lee Seong-kweun, a lawmaker who spoke to reporters after the closed-door briefing.
The agency said Mr. Kim appeared to be preparing to send more troops to Russia, as he sees Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II as an opportunity to advance his own military and diplomatic ambitions.
Here is what to know about the North Korean military and the troops Mr. Kim sent in his country’s first major intervention in an overseas conflict.
What are the North Korean troops’ weaknesses?
The North’s special forces have trained mainly for sniper missions, urban warfare and infiltrations by sea, air and across Korea’s many mountains. They have not trained enough for drone and trench warfare waged over terrain like the mostly open and flat Russia-Ukraine front line, said Doo Jin-ho, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul.
For two years during the pandemic when North Korea shut down, its special forces rotated in and out of guard-post duties along the country’s border with China, missing some of their regular training, Mr. Doo said.
The North Korean troops’ deployment was so rushed that it could take time for Russia to integrate them properly into its military, South Korean intelligence officials told lawmakers. They were thrust into battle after learning a smattering of military terms, like “open fire,” “artillery” and “in position” in Russian, potentially creating problems in battlefield communications, they said.
“From top to bottom, the North Korean military has had no live combat experiences for decades,” said Ahn Chan-il, a former North Korean army sergeant living in South Korea. “The troops must have had a crash course on drone and infantry warfare, but the question is how well they are familiarized with it.”
Who is in charge?
Once dismissed by some outside observers as young and inexperienced, Mr. Kim, the country’s leader, has proved a strong commander in chief who rules with what the South Korean government has called a “reign of terror.”
His father and predecessor, Kim Jong-il, led his country with a “military-first” policy. He relied on the Korean People’s Army to hold the country together in the wake of a famine in the 1990s. In return, he allowed it to hog government resources, as well as to run profitable operations, such as mining, fisheries and smuggling.
Once Mr. Kim took over after his father’s death in 2011, he moved to subjugate the military elites, banishing or executing top generals. In 2015, Gen. Hyon Yong-chol, then the defense minister, was executed with an antiaircraft gun after he dozed off in Mr. Kim’s presence, according to South Korean intelligence officials.
In 2017, Mr. Kim sidelined Vice Marshal Hwang Pyong-so, the military’s top political officer. For two months, Mr. Hwang was made to sweep the front yard of a party building in Pyongyang, said Lee Ilkyu, a North Korean diplomat in Cuba who defected to Seoul last year.
North Korean officials live with constant fear because they don’t know when they might fall victim to Kim Jong-un’s impulsiveness, Mr. Lee added.
Outside analysts closely watch who accompanies Mr. Kim on his tours of military units and weapons test sites for signs of who might be in — or out of — his favor.
In September, the analysts began noticing two new faces in the circle of top officials around Mr. Kim: Col. Gen. Kim Yong-bok and Col. Gen. Ri Chang-ho. Their importance to Mr. Kim was revealed when they later accompanied the troops to Russia.
General Kim was identified as commander of the North’s special forces during a military parade in 2017, according to Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. General Ri headed the military’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, which is involved in arms trade, cybercrime and other illicit activities to fatten Mr. Kim’s coffers.
On Monday, the United States and its allies blacklisted the two generals for their roles in Russia’s war. They join other key members of the North Korean government already blacklisted under United Nations Security Council resolutions.
The soldiers risk death for higher status.
The soldiers sent to Russia were probably from poor families. The chance to go abroad and the prospect of cash can be huge incentives for them, Mr. Ahn said. Russia could pay as much as $2,000 a month per North Korean soldier, according to the South Korean intelligence agency. Although their government is expected to take most of it, the remainder can still be a huge sum for an ordinary soldier.
North Korea was also boosting the morale of troops fighting on the front line by promising them fast-track induction into membership of the Workers’ Party, a highly coveted status symbol, said Kim Seongmin, a former North Korean army captain who runs a radio station in the South, citing informers inside the North.
“The troops had little hope for their future in the North,” said Kim Kwang-Jin, another North Korean defector, who works as a senior analyst at the government-run Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul. “They go there at the risk of their lives, but they will also see it as an opportunity to make money and, if they are killed, to elevate their family’s social status to that of the war dead.”
Even if they suffered heavy casualties, Mr. Kim’s totalitarian control would make it impossible for the public to complain, defectors said.
“North Korea will take the casualties for granted,” said Sim Ju-il, a former North Korean army lieutenant colonel living in Seoul. “It will consider them an inevitable cost of gaining experience in modern warfare in case it should fight against the United States military in Korea.”
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