North Korea Uses Elite Troops to Barter With Russia: Experts

In this pool photograph distributed by the Russian state agency Sputnik, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un toast during a reception at the Mongnangwan Reception House in Pyongyang on June 19, 2024. Vladimir Smirnov /POOL/AFP via Getty Images

North Korea has bound itself with Russia as a co-belligerent by sending elite troops to the Russian camp, according to experts. This, they say, would be a quid pro quo move for North Korea to obtain food supplies and military technology improvements.

About 10,000 North Korean Special Operation Forces (SOFs)—the country’s best-equipped and best-fed troops that had long been training to infiltrate the South and defend against foreign attacks on the North—have been dispatched to Vladivostok and other Russian bases, according to South Korea’s intelligence agency.

On Oct. 28, both the Pentagon and NATO confirmed that some North Korean military units have already moved into the Kursk region, the front line where Russians fight against Ukrainian troops. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said those foreign troops will likely fight against Ukraine within “the next several weeks.”

Following a meeting last September and then signing a strategic partnership treaty in June that committed both countries to mutual military assistance, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took a step further with the deployment of North Korean troops.

North Korea has the largest SOF in the world, with some 200,000 elite soldiers, according to the South Korean Ministry of Defense.

Moscow needs large numbers of troops to support its war efforts in Ukraine, and Pyongyang fulfilled Moscow’s demands to get things in return, said Miles Yu, director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank.

In Yu’s view, Putin had chosen the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company, as his primary instrument for conducting wars overseas. But an armed insurrection launched by the Wager Group last June derailed such a plan.

“When Wagner stayed away from Putin, [Putin] needed the forces to fight for him in a similar capacity. And there’s only one country that could go to that. It’s North Korea, and North Korea is willing, and North Korea is reciprocal to Putin’s offering,” Yu said.

As an exchange, Yu said, North Korea would have access to food, grains, energy, and oil supplies from Russia as this barren country, home to 23 million people, has been long short of bare necessities.

North Korea has suffered severe food shortages in recent decades, and concerns have grown over food security since the authorities closed the border during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kim Taewoo, former president of the Korea Institute for National Unification and professor of Konyang University, said that Kim Jong Un risked Western sanctions to become a co-belligerent with Russia as he is ambitious to reign supreme on the Korean peninsula.

“Pyongyang is keen to obtain Russian help to improve its nuclear weapons, what Kim Jong Un sees as the key to suppress the South and have a bargaining chip with Washington,” Kim Taewoo told The Epoch Times.

South Korean special forces using UH-60 helicopters maneuver in a search operation to capture a North Korean agent holed up in the area, on Oct. 25, 2024. Kim Jae-Hwan /AFP via Getty Images

The North Korean soldiers dispatched to Russia included the Storm Corps, also known as the 11th Army Corps, a special forces unit trained on infiltration, infrastructure sabotage, and assassinations.

The corps’ assassination history can be traced to the raid of the Blue House—the South Korean president’s residence—an unsuccessful assassination attempt on South Korean President Park Chung Hee on Jan. 21, 1968.

According to a report by Choun Daily, in response to North Korea’s SOF deployment to Russia, the South Korean government is considering sending an expert team to assist Ukraine in coping with North Korea’s intelligence service and enemy tactics.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Oct. 24 that South Korea won’t “sit idle” over the dispatch of troops by Pyongyang to Russia. Various necessary measures will be considered, including the direct supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine, to ensure security on the Korean peninsula, the president said.

Last year, the Yoon administration indirectly provided Ukraine with 155-millimeter artillery ammunition by working with the U.S. administration.

Jon Sun contributed to this report.