How would North Korea’s ‘wild card’ troops fare in a modern conflict? The world could soon find out

The world could soon see how North Korea’s soldiers perform in a modern conflict after NATO and the Pentagon confirmed this week that about 10,000 of Pyongyang’s troops have landed in Russia, where U.S. officials warned Thursday that the majority are in the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine and is likely to enter the conflict soon.

“We have not yet seen these troops deployed in combat against Ukrainian forces, but we expect that to happen in the coming days,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a news conference.

In the more than two and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine, it has suffered heavy losses on the battlefield (NATO puts the number of dead or wounded Russian soldiers at more than 600,000) and faces challenges in finding new fighters.

Soldiers provided by its ally North Korea would provide Russia with a fresh source of manpower without requiring it to conscript Russian citizens to fight, but the question of how effective these soldiers might be in modern warfare remains.

North Korea has not engaged in a war of this magnitude in decades, but the reclusive state led by Kim Jong-un has an army of more than a million people, conducts provocative missile tests and has aggressively pursued the development of nuclear weapons despite Western efforts to stop it.

All this makes the North Korean contingents sent to Russia and deployed in Ukraine what one think tank calls “a wild card”. Here’s what we know and don’t know about these troops.

What combat experience do North Korean troops have?

The last time North Korea’s military entered a large-scale conflict was in 1950, when it invaded South Korea to start the Korean War, which lasted three years before an armistice was signed. But the tensions between the two have persisted.

In the decades since, North Korea has occasionally sent troops abroad, but on a smaller scale than what is happening in Russia today.

“This deployment is historic for North Korea, which has previously sent advisory or specialist groups abroad, but never a large ground force,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a US think tank, said in a recent post on his website.

North Korea was known to have sent pilots to fight in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s, although accounts vary on the number.

North Korea also sent about 1,500 military advisers and several dozen air force personnel to Egypt during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, according to Niu Song, a professor at Shanghai International Studies University.

More recently according to media reports in 2013 which Pyongyang deniedNorth Korea provided military aid to Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, including helicopter pilots and advisers.

What kind of training do these troops have?

Ukraine’s military intelligence has stated that the North Korean deployment includes 500 officers and a handful of generals. On Thursday, Blinken said the troops sent to Russia had received training in artillery, drones, as well as “basic infantry operations,” which he said included trench-clearing training.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service had previously reported that some of the troops that Pyongyang sent to Russia are part of North Korea’s special forces – and they had been training at military bases in Russia’s Far East.

The Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, says North Korea’s special forces considered “elite troops” who are better educated than fresh recruits from Russia.

More broadly, analysts see potential challenges Russia will face in integrating these troops into its war effort, including being able to communicate — though media reports suggest it aims to provide one translator for every 30 North Korean soldiers.

Can they make a difference?

Opinions differ on the impact Pyongyang’s soldiers could have on the Ukraine war, although their presence in Russia is seen as an unwelcome development for both the war itself and wider regional security.

“The deepening military cooperation between Russia and North Korea is a threat to both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security,” NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told reporters on Monday.

Analysts and observers say the initial number of North Korean troops is not large enough to significantly change the picture on the battlefield.

Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army, believes that the North Korean troops currently deployed from Russia “are unlikely to have a decisive impact on the war in Ukraine.” In one recent analysis he noted that their current totals amount to about a week’s worth of Russian casualties.

The think tank CSIS called the presence of the troops “a wild card.” It predicted that they would likely serve in support roles for Russia.

Kim Yong-hyun of South Korea’s Dongguk University also sees the Pyongyang-deployed soldiers as providing “meaningful support” but says it will not be a game-changing boost for Moscow.

He told Reuters they could provide a role in defense against potential Ukrainian advances inside Russian territory.

Mark Montgomery, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral and senior fellow at the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, believes that the main threat North Korea poses to Ukraine is not these troops, but rather millions of rounds of ammunition it has already shipped to Russia.

“This is how the Russians are currently conducting a massive artillery campaign against the Ukrainians,” he said.

Montgomery also said that while North Korean troops could gain practical battlefield experience fighting in Ukraine, they could also be thrown into the costly “meat grinder” strikes that Russia has relied on to make incremental gains.

And if they face high casualty numbers as a result, the Brookings Institution has noted that Kim Jong-un’s willingness to send elite soldiers to Russia would likely be tempered.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday reiterated Washington’s position that if North Korean troops join the fight against Ukraine, “they would make themselves legitimate military targets.”

Why is North Korea doing this and what’s next?

In recent months, North Korea has signed a mutual assistance pact with Russia and is now doing even more by sending thousands of troops to serve its allies.

Jun Lee, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation think tank, says North Korea appears to have leaned toward Russia in an effort to change the status quo as it grapples with ongoing sanctions and spillover effects from the pandemic.

“It saw the Ukraine war as this kind of geopolitical opportunity to make a big bet, get closer to Russia and kind of mitigate some of its biggest problems,” he said in an interview.

And with North Korea’s armed forces numbering about 1.3 million members, the troops it has sent to Russia represent only a fraction of its available soldiers, and several observers see the potential for those deployments to grow.

On Tuesday, North Korea said its foreign minister had traveled to Russia. Although it didn’t say why, South Korea’s spy agency suspects the diplomat may be there to discuss the possibility of sending even more troops to Russia’s aid.