South Korea, NATO consider responses to North's soldiers in Russia

The deployment of North Koreans to assist Russia at the frontlines of its war in Ukraine has sent NATO scrambling to formulate a response as Kyiv called the presence of Pyongyang's soldiers a “huge escalation risk” over the weekend.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service released a satellite image on Friday which it said shows a Russian troop transport ship carrying a detachment of North Korean special forces from Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province, to Russia the previous week. [NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICE]

The deployment of North Koreans to assist Russia at the frontlines of its war in Ukraine has sent NATO scrambling to formulate a response as Kyiv called the presence of Pyongyang's soldiers a “huge escalation risk” over the weekend.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) confirmed Friday that North Korea has decided to deploy 12,000 soldiers to assist Russia in its war against Ukraine, a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told NATO the North was preparing to send soldiers to fight against his country as he urged support for his “victory plan” to end the war by joining NATO and using weapons supplied by the West to strike deeper inside Russia.

At a joint press conference with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot in Kyiv on Saturday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the arrival of North Koreans on the battlefield represents a “huge threat of further escalation of Russian aggression against Ukraine” and a “big risk of it growing out of its current scale and borders,” while Barrot said the deployment would “push the conflict into a new stage, an additional escalatory stage.”

However, it remains to be seen if the deployment of North Korean soldiers to Russia’s frontlines in Ukraine will spur NATO members to significantly boost military support for Kyiv.

A screenshot of a video released by the Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communication (Spravdi) on X shows soldiers speaking Korean as they receive gear at the Sergievsky Training Ground in the Russian Far East. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

The same day the NIS announced its findings, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters he could not “confirm reports that North Koreans are actively now as soldiers engaged in the war effort” but added this “might change.”

His remarks marked a shift from his response to Zelensky’s plan the previous day, when he said that NATO has “no evidence that North Korean soldiers are involved in the fight” in Ukraine.

That claim was countered by the Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communication (Spravdi), which posted a video on X on Saturday that showed soldiers speaking Korean as they received gear at the Sergievsky Training Ground in the Russian Far East.

Spravdi also recently provided CNN with a Korean-language questionnaire prepared by Russia to facilitate the distribution of military equipment to North Korean soldiers as additional evidence of their deployment to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communication (Spravdi) provided CNN with this Korean-language questionnaire it said had been prepared by Russia to facilitate the distribution of military equipment to North Korean soldiers deployed in its territory. [SPRAVDI]

While French President Emmanuel Macron and leaders of other NATO member states such as Poland have previously aired the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday that NATO should support Ukraine “as powerfully” as it can while making sure the alliance “does not become a party to the war.”

The presence of North Koreans fighting in Ukraine could also lead the South Korean government to change its longstanding policy of not providing arms to countries at war.

On Friday, Seoul warned it would respond to the North Koreans’ deployment by “whatever means available” in coordination with the international community.

South Korea's National Intelligence Service on Friday released this satellite photograph, which it said shows North Korean troops gathered from training in Ussuriysk in the Russian Far East on Wednesday. [NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SERVICE]

Experts remain divided on the utility of North Korean soldiers to Russia’s war effort.

Frank Ledwidge, a professor of war studies at the University of Portsmouth, told Britain’s Independent online news outlet that Russia is “more likely to use North Korean troops for supporting roles, such as engineering, driving trucks, digging trenches and repairing vehicles, rather than in frontline combat where they lack experience.”

He also predicted that “given the way Russians do things, if [the North Koreans] are anywhere near the front line, they’ll be defeated in short order,” but noted the development would still put Ukraine at a disadvantage.

Chuck Pfarrer, a former U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six Squadron Leader, also recently told the Kyiv Post that North Korean troops are likely to play a supporting role.

He noted that Ukrainian forces have “more than 10 years of combat experience and have been trained by the best NATO troops,” while the North Korean military has not conducted a large-scale actual combat operation since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice more than 70 years ago.

On the other hand, Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the U.S.-based RAND think tank, told Yonhap News Agency he expects “the Russians are going to tend to use [North Korean soldiers] as cannon fodder” to “try and achieve breakthroughs with them.”

Bennett added that while North Korean troops have no recent combat experience, they are not like the majority of Russians because they are cohesive and spend extended periods fulfilling the regime’s military service requirement.

Their deployment comes amid mounting inter-Korean tensions after North Korea claimed South Korea had sent drones distributing anti-regime propaganda over Pyongyang on three occasions earlier this month.

On Saturday, a North Korean defense ministry spokesperson told state media the Pyongyang branch of the regime’s Ministry of Public Security discovered a long-range reconnaissance drone that matched one publicly displayed in Seoul during the Armed Forces Day parade on Oct. 1.

The spokesperson warned the North could conduct an “immediate retaliatory attack” should it detect another South Korean intrusion.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]