Russia is using North Korean troops as “cannon fodder” for its war in Ukraine, Seoul said Thursday, slamming the controversial deployment and warning it “won’t sit idle”.
AFP takes a look at what we know:
What’s happening?
South Korea, NATO and the United States claim thousands of North Korean troops are training in Russia — something Moscow and Pyongyang deny.
The first batch of elite forces left for Vladivostok early October, Seoul’s spy agency says, adding that 3,000 North Koreans are currently training at military bases across the Far East, using Russian paperwork and uniforms, with thousands more to follow.
Each soldier will be paid $2,000 a month — more than the average North Korean makes in a year — and Russia is hiring interpreters to train the new recruits on drone warfare and high-tech kit, Seoul said.
South Korea’s Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said the soldiers were being used as “cannon fodder mercenaries” by Russia.
“Kim Jong Un simply sold his soldiers” into an illegal war, he added.
What will the soldiers do?
North Korean special forces are trained to “be deployed deep into enemy territory,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies told AFP.
“Their objective usually is to infiltrate the rear, strike key facilities, and carry out disruption operations,” Lim added.
But Ukrainian media reports suggest some troops will be dispatched to Kursk — an area hit by a surprise offensive by Kyiv this summer.
“Kursk is mostly flatland and Kim Jong Un, being a cunning person, might have sent them to act as front-line cannon fodder,” said Lim.
“Their role is likely to be more about disrupting and isolating Ukrainian forces from behind and providing some support to Russian soldiers,” he added.
Legally, Kursk is Russian territory so “Kim Jong Un can defend his dispatch of troops there by saying that he assisted Russia in repelling Ukrainian ‘aggression'”, Vladimir Tikhonov, professor of Korean studies at the University of Oslo, told AFP.
This would follow “the letter of their treaty”, signed by Kim and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in June and approved by Moscow’s legislature on Thursday.
Why does Russia want them?
“Russia suffers from acute personnel shortage on the frontlines now,” Tikhonov said, and the arrival of North Korean soldiers “solves the issue”.
The North Korean soldiers can take over rear-end tasks “allowing Russian soldiers previously tasked with logistics to be sent to the frontline,” he said.
Additionally, “Russia might be trying to see how this third party’s involvement could affect the Ukraine war situation” more broadly, said Asan Institute research fellow Lee Dong-gyu.
It will allow Moscow to “gauge how NATO or the international community would respond” to other actors joining the fight, Lee added.
Will Seoul commit to Kyiv?
South Korea, a major arms exporter, has hinted it could consider providing weapons directly to Ukraine — reversing a longstanding domestic policy barring arms transfers into active conflict zones.
It is “highly likely” this will happen, Choi Gi-il, a former national security official, told AFP.
“It seems the government has decided to pledge military support to Kyiv,” he said.
“It’s just a matter of when that pledge will be made official.”
Han Kwon-hee of the Korea Association of Defence Industry Studies told AFP it might be “too drastic” at first for Seoul to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine.
But it could give more “defensive weapons — such as surface-to-air missiles to intercept incoming missiles or drones”, he said, especially as Seoul has a large stockpile of such weapons ready for immediate use.
Sending lethal weapons to Kyiv would be welcomed by the United States but would “destroy” South Korea’s ties with Russia, North Korean studies expert Choi Jin-wook told AFP.
What will Kyiv do?
Ukraine has already released a propaganda video targeting North Korean soldiers, claiming that if they surrender, they will receive food, comfortable accommodation and healthcare.
“You don’t have to die meaninglessly on the soil of another country,” it said in a Korean-language statement on YouTube.
“Surrender! Ukraine will protect you and provide food and warmth.”
Park Choong-kwon, a North Korean defector and now Seoul lawmaker, said the South should “consider providing Ukraine with loudspeaker broadcasts to use against North Korean troops”.
The South Korean military has for years blasted foreign news and K-pop music along its border with the North as a means of encouraging Pyongyang’s soldiers to defect.
“The best outcome we can hope for is the defection of the entire North Korean army,” Park told local media.