jackpot for Kim Jong-un and North Korea

On the front, rather than being taken prisoner, North Korean soldiers commit suicide with their grenades. Kim Jong-un sends cannon fodder to Russia, but Vladimir Putin’s counterpart is a danger for the Korean peninsula.

Patrick Diekmann / t-online

Russian tourists visiting North Korea, taking bus trips across the country, sunbathing on the beach or eating dinner in North Korean restaurants. These kinds of videos, even if they remain rare, have become significantly more frequent in recent months.

Since Russian vacationers were allowed to visit the dictatorship under the strict supervision of North Korean leaders, they have been sharing their videos on social media. They thus give Western observers, sometimes unwittingly, an insight into this compartmentalized autocracy.

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According to Russian media, in 2024 alone, 1,500 Russian tourists will have visited North Korea, and the trend is increasing. The dictatorship lets the North Koreans most loyal to the regime approach them and their tour guides are secret service agents. Russian tourists attend propaganda tours aimed at presenting North Korea in the most modern way possible. The Russians then confirm this in their videos, entirely in the spirit of Kim Jong-un’s propaganda.

But the images also show another reality: especially outside Pyongyang, the undernourished population, power plants that run on coal and almost no traffic on the roads. These are also the consequences of international sanctions imposed for decades due to North Korea’s nuclear program.

But Russia’s war against Ukraine offered Kim Jong-un a chance to break out of this isolation. The head of the Kremlin is weak and even its strategic partner China does not support Russia with all its weapons or soldiers. North Korea therefore willingly allowed itself to be drawn into the war in Ukraine by Russia.

Internationally, rapprochement with a pariah like North Korea shows the extent to which Russia has lost face. For Kim Jong-un, on the other hand, it’s a jackpot: Putin brings the country essential foreign currency – Russian tourists, for example, have to pay in American dollars.

On the other hand, the Russian counterpart to the support of North Korea is massive: Putin not only helps Kim Jong-un to emerge from his isolation, but he also wants to modernize the North Korean army. Which becomes a danger for the entire East Asian region.

North Korea lends a hand to Russia

The approximately 10,000 North Korean troops who appear to have been deployed by the Russian military command, mainly in the Kursk region of southern Russia, are often the center of media attention. Dramatic destinies in more than one way.

The North Korean warriors would not even have been aware of the country in which they were deployed. Overworked, they sometimes fired on Russian positions. And they commit suicide before being captured, often by detonating grenades next to their heads.

North Korean soldiers normally have no choice but to disobey orders. Because in North Korea, the detention of relatives is an instrument of central power of the command and the families of soldiers are constantly in danger.

But North Korean arms deliveries to Russia are even more important than soldiers. The American daily The Wall Street Journal reported that North Korea sent 20,000 containers of munitions to Putin in December 2024. From low-grade munitions like 122mm and 152mm artillery shells to the newer Hwasong-11 class ballistic missiles .

But Pyongyang also reportedly delivered armored howitzers and multiple rocket launchers. North Korea has so far earned up to $5.5 billion from arms sales with Moscow, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Kim Jong-un valued by Putin

North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world. At the same time, Russia’s ammunition needs fuel North Korean arms production. But Kim Jong-un receives much more than money from Russia in exchange for his support.

It is especially the United States which is following the situation closely: it is monitoring reciprocal deliveries from Russia and North Korea by satellite. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a warning on January 6:

The Americans are absolutely right to be concerned, as Russia and North Korea have a vested interest in closer cooperation in military aviation, space and missile technology. It is precisely in these areas that the North Korean military is in great need of modernization. The North Korean Air Force’s most modern fighter jet – the MiG-29 – was developed in 1977, and most of its equipment is even older.

Furthermore, North Korean leaders are eyeing Russian missile technology, particularly to improve their own nuclear capabilities. The first consequences of the strategic partnership between North Korea and Russia are already being felt: in early January, North Korea declared that it had successfully tested its first hypersonic missile. If this information is true, this would not have been possible without Russian support.

Kim Jong-un therefore sacrifices 10,000 North Korean soldiers, a pile of old conventional munitions and receives in exchange a lot of prestige for his regime. He has met Putin personally several times and calls him his “best friend.”

The Kremlin leader, meanwhile, will block new UN sanctions against North Korea. Meanwhile, the United States fears that Moscow will recognize Kim Jong-un’s dictatorship as a nuclear power. For Kim Jong-un, the war in Europe is therefore a jackpot. Until a few years ago, no one (or almost no one) wanted to side with the autocrat, let alone arm him.

Peace on the Korean Peninsula under threat

In the end, it was probably out of desperation that Putin turned to North Korea. But the consequences of this security policy cooperation could seriously threaten security in East Asia.

North Korea is a hereditary dictatorship in which, since the founding of the state in 1948, the Kim family has been primarily concerned with its own maintenance of power. The biggest threats are internal political uprisings and South Korea, which is economically successful and supported by the United States. Even today, there is no real peace between North and South Korea, although fighting ended during the Korean War in 1953. The conflict is frozen and a situation of crisis. Military stalemate developed, preserving peace until now.

But Putin is shaking it up. Indeed, after allying himself with Kim Jong-un this summer, the latter had it included in the North Korean constitution in October 2024 that South Korea was an “enemy state”. Moscow and Pyongyang have also concluded a defense pact which further strengthens the military alliance.

If North Korea manages to send nuclear warheads towards South Korea using hypersonic missiles without the South Koreans being able to intercept them, the balance of power on the Korean peninsula will be upset.

Therefore, Russia’s strengthening of North Korea is a danger for the region. South Korea will notably consider arming itself more, including at the nuclear level. This conflict could become a real powder keg.

But Putin is also taking risks with his new ally. Because by destabilizing the Korean peninsula, the head of the Kremlin risks alienating his most powerful ally: China. Beijing does not want a leader on its own border to continue developing nuclear weapons and whom it considers unpredictable.

This may also be the reason why Chinese President Xi Jinping has distanced himself from Russia in recent months. Russia is therefore paying an immense political and strategic price for North Korean soldiers.

Translated from German by Anne Castella