SEOUL: North Korea’s decision to deploy thousands of soldiers to Ukraine’s front lines cements Pyongyang’s contentious military alliance with Moscow, experts told AFP, and pulls Russia deeper into Korean peninsula security.
About 1,500 North Korean special forces soldiers are already in Russia acclimatising, likely to head to the front lines soon, Seoul’s spy agency said on Friday (Oct 18), with thousands more troops set to depart imminently, Pyongyang’s first such deployment overseas.
The move demonstrates that the military deal signed by the North’s Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin in June, which included a mutual defence clause, was not just for show.
“This establishes a framework where Russia’s intervention or military support will automatically occur if North Korea is attacked or faces a crisis,” Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told AFP.
The fact that North Korean soldiers will fight alongside Russia in Ukraine proves how “solid” the Putin-Kim deal really is, Hong said.
And the boost of troops from Pyongyang could help Moscow to hold “occupied territories or aid in further territorial gains”, he added.
North and South Korea remain technically at war as the 1950 to 1953 conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace deal. But while Kim has built up a nuclear arsenal, Seoul lacks nukes of its own.
The South is protected by the so-called US nuclear umbrella, and Seoul and Washington routinely conduct large-scale joint military drills, which infuriate Pyongyang.
By sending troops to Russia, Kim could be hoping to create a more integrated North Korean and Russian military deterrent, akin to the US-South Korea alliance, potentially “resulting in a significant shift” in the Koreas’ security dynamics, Hong said.
