“I think there’s no reason why [North Korea] should not keep sending in battle casualty replacements and not to expand the North Korean force,” said Keir Giles, Russia and Eurasia expert at Chatham House, a UK-based think tank.
“Russia – if all the estimates are to be believed – still badly needs the manpower, and North Korea still plainly values what it’s getting in exchange for this. So why would this force not be just the precursor to a much larger deployment?” he told Al Jazeera.
Grim orders
Moscow has been cagey about the presence of North Korean soldiers, leaving Ukraine and its Western partners as the main sources of information about their alleged military conduct.
In recent weeks, Kyiv has suggested there are grim orders at play – executions and suicides to hide identities and prevent being captured alive.
“After the battles with our guys, the Russians are also trying to … literally burn the faces of the killed North Korean soldiers,” wrote Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on his Telegram channel last month – an apparent effort to conceal their ethnic identity.
In December he wrote, “their own people are executing them.”
Killed North Koreans have been found to be carrying papers falsely identifying them as Russian citizens, Ukraine’s army has said.
Giles suggested Russian pride could be a factor.
“[Russian leaders] don’t want this to become an issue within Russia itself because it undermines the myth that Russia does not need allies, that it is a superpower… that it is perfectly capable of winning wars on its own,” said Giles.
Ukrainian troops and officials also claim that North Koreans have been instructed to kill themselves rather than surrender.
Zelenskyy last week decorated the paratroopers of the 95th Air Assault Brigade who captured the first two North Korean POWs on January 9 and 11.
Previously, wounded North Koreans are understood to have tried to lure their captors into a deathtrap, detonating a grenade as Ukrainians approached.
Ukrainian paratroopers caught a third North Korean POW on Monday, after rebuffing an assault.
In their opinion, he tried to kill himself.
“When the [van that would transport him] drove up, there were concrete pillars under the road, and he accelerated and hit his head on the pillar. He hit it very hard and passed out,” the paratroopers said on January 21.
According to Giles, “the fact that they only have three prisoners… is a good indication that measures are indeed being taken to make sure North Koreans don’t get caught.”
One prisoner, a reconnaissance sniper, said he was told he was on a training mission, according to Kyiv.
North Korea’s benefits
North Korea’s involvement in Ukraine comes with benefits.
While the isolated state has a history of sending mercenaries to wars in Africa and Vietnam for state revenue, it is receiving combat readiness at a level of action not since 1953, when the Korean War ended.
Last October, expert Olena Guseinova, a lecturer at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, estimated North Korea could realistically send up to 20,000 soldiers to Ukraine based on economic interests, in a research paper for the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.
She estimated the value of weapons North Korea sold to Russia at $5.5bn. North Korean ballistic missiles have reportedly been falling on Ukraine since last September.
“Kim Jong-un could potentially accumulate between $143m and $572m in additional annual revenue if he were to commit between 5,000 and 20,000 personnel to support Russia’s war effort,” Guseinova wrote.
“The overall capacity of the DPRK’s military could hypothetically allow Kim Jong Un to deploy up to 100,000 troops to Ukraine. Realistically, however, the likelihood of such a commitment seems improbable,” she said, because of concerns about exposing North Koreans to outside influences.
The Russian collaboration with North Korea started in the summer of 2023, when South Korean intelligence reported that Pyongyang began to supply Russia with nine million artillery shells.
In addition to a defence pact with Russia, North Korea has been promised ballistic missile technology and assistance in launching satellites.
