Summary and Key Points:
-North Korea’s deployment of 15,000 troops to support Russia in Ukraine offers critical battlefield experience that could significantly enhance its military effectiveness.
-Though early engagements saw heavy casualties due to tactical missteps, North Korean soldiers quickly adapted to the drone-centric combat environment.
-Lessons learned on advanced tactics, drone warfare, and joint operations with Russian forces could potentially elevate North Korea’s conventional capabilities.
-However, effectively integrating these insights across the broader Korean People’s Army remains challenging.
-Ultimately, North Korea’s involvement strengthens ties with Russia, boosting long-term regime stability, and providing Pyongyang invaluable frontline experience unavailable through traditional training or military exercises.
North Korea and the Ukraine War
What can North Korea take away from its participation in the Russia-Ukraine War?
As Russia’s Kursk counter-offensive winds to a successful conclusion, it is as of yet unclear how North Korean forces will be used for the rest of the war.
A transfer to other parts of the front may be in the works, but fighting in the Donbass is of a more static character than fighting around Kursk, largely because of better Ukrainian logistics.
Elements of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) have been blooded (and bloodied) in Kursk, but they still may have lessons to learn in other sectors. This, in turn, could make the KPA a more lethal threat in Northeast Asia and elsewhere.
Large scale operations under the command of a foreign government or coalition are hardly unusual. In World War II Spain’s “Blue Division” served on the Eastern Front despite Spain’s official neutrality in the war. During the Vietnam Conflict South Korean troops operated alongside American and South Vietnamese forces. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars each saw a multitude of national contingents, each with its own ways of fighting. These deployments offer valuable experience to armies that don’t necessarily have the opportunities to develop expertise in combat on their own. In some cases, they can catalyze modernization in a fighting force, leading to widespread changes in tactics, doctrine, and the usage of technology.
What Did North Korea Learn?
But the long-term impact of the deployment on North Korean military effectiveness depends on the ability of the KPA to incorporate lessons learned during the fighting into its own systems of training and doctrine.
Incorporating foreign learning is a complicated process, because it usually involves taking the lessons learned from a small contingent and applying those to the force as a whole. This can run afoul of bureaucratic politics, established hierarchies, and relationships with other parts of the state. The KPA is thought to operate largely on the Soviet model of training and modernization, a model which often moves slowly but that nonetheless has historically been able to incorporate lessons learned during fighting.
North Korean conventional forces have often been overlooked in comparison to the DPRK’s nuclear and missile capabilities, largely because Pyongyang made a decision decades ago that it could not compete conventionally with the United States and South Korea. When the KPA does come up it is usually in reference to its large stock of artillery, which could devastate Seoul and provides a powerful deterrent to South Korea and the US. The North Korean economy probably cannot sustain a large-scale conventional military modernization program, but improvements in lethality are still worth tracking, especially as the promise of long-term Russian support for Pyongyang helps guarantee the regime’s survival prospects.
Performance Issues
The performance of North Korean soldiers in the early days of the deployment did not inspire confidence. Dismounted attacks across open ground in the presence of artillery and FPV drones resulted in high casualties.
But as time has gone on the North Korean performance has improved. North Korean soldiers appear to be fit, competent, and loyal to their commanders. Ukrainians at the front have reported that North Korean soldiers fight to the death and commit suicide in order to avoid capture.
The North Koreans have earned experience fighting on a drone-dominated battlefield, although it’s unclear whether any KPA units have actually incorporated drones into their tactics. The Russians have also improved cooperation with the KPA soldiers, better integrating the North Koreans into operations and providing air and drone support to North Korean attacks.
Perhaps 4000 of a total deployment of 15000 KPA soldiers have been killed or wounded thus far in the conflict. The deployed forces appear to be from elite units, and include personnel from across the North Korean military hierarchy.
This should provide ample grist for the distillation and implementation of lessons across the entire force. Moreover, there’s little reason to hope that the North Koreans are about to go home. Moscow and Pyongyang can easily find legal justification for the use of KPA troops in the Donbass, and despite the efforts of the Trump administration the war does not appear to be grinding to a close.
What Happens Next?
It’s possible to make too much of North Korea’s experience on the Russia-Ukraine front. It is, after all, unlikely that a second Korean War will be decided by the sophistication of North Korean infantry infiltration tactics. In the long run, winning the political, economic, and technological support of Russia is probably more important to the survival of the Pyongyang regime than an improvement in the effectiveness of its conventional military forces.
Still, North Korean troops fighting in Russia are directly learning valuable lessons about modern tactics and modern technologies, lessons that the South Koreans have to learn vicariously. As Pyongyang has seen fit to deploy its troops in one foreign war, it’s hardly impossible that Kim Jong Un will find other uses for his most elite soldiers.
About the Author: Dr. Robert Farley
Dr. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. He received his BS from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph. D. from the University of Washington in 2004. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020), and most recently Waging War with Gold: National Security and the Finance Domain Across the Ages (Lynne Rienner, 2023). He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. Dr. Farley is also a founder and senior editor of Lawyers, Guns and Money.
