COMMENTARY: Kim Jong Un, the merchant who trades his soldiers for Russian missiles

A counteroffensive that drove Ukraine out of Kursk

In the spring of 2026, a combined force of Russian troops and approximately 12,000 North Korean soldiers launched a counteroffensive that drove Ukrainian forces out of nearly all of the Russian territory they had captured during the August 2024 incursion. This recapture, directly facilitated by North Korean manpower, illustrates the real tactical impact of this alliance on the course of the conflict.

This counteroffensive represented a significant strategic setback for Kyiv, which had counted on retaining this Russian enclave as a potential bargaining chip in future negotiations. The loss of this territory has partially weakened Ukraine’s negotiating position—a direct cost of North Korea’s intervention.

A Bitter Lesson for Western Strategists

This episode also served as a lesson for Western military analysts, who had largely underestimated Pyongyang’s ability and willingness to deploy combat troops so far from its own territory, in a conflict that, on the face of it, did not directly involve any North Korean national interests.

This initial underestimation has since been corrected by several Western intelligence agencies, which are now closely monitoring the evolution of military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, aware that it could extend to other geopolitical theaters in the future.

I believe the West took too long to take this alliance seriously. To underestimate the willingness of a regime as isolated as North Korea’s to sacrifice its own soldiers in order to obtain technology is to ignore the logic of absolute survival that has driven this dictatorship for decades.

Missile and Air Defense Technologies

In exchange for this bloodshed, Pyongyang is receiving significant technology transfers from Moscow in the fields of ballistic missiles, air defense, and now—as evidenced by the July 4 tests—advanced naval systems, including cruise missiles and anti-submarine capabilities that were previously beyond the reach of North Korea’s military program.

These technological advances represent a major qualitative leap for a North Korean military that has historically been isolated from international military innovation networks due to sanctions imposed for decades by the United Nations and Western powers in response to the regime’s nuclear program.

A Regime Consolidating Its Domestic Legitimacy

Beyond direct military gains, this cooperation with Russia also allows Kim Jong Un to strengthen his domestic legitimacy by presenting his regime as a respected strategic partner of a major world power, rather than as a pariah state completely isolated on the international stage.

This aspect of domestic propaganda should not be underestimated: for a regime that tightly controls the information available to its population, every image of military cooperation with Moscow serves to justify the sacrifices imposed on the North Korean people in the name of a supposed restored greatness.

I see this aspect of domestic propaganda as one of the most tragic elements of this story. The North Korean people are paying a double price: once through the lives lost on the Ukrainian front, and again through the lie of national greatness that serves only to ensure the survival of Kim’s regime.

A logistics flow documented since 2023

Beyond combat troops, North Korea has been supplying Russia with considerable quantities of artillery shells and ballistic missiles since 2023—a logistics flow that several Western intelligence agencies have documented through analysis of satellite imagery and cross-border rail movements between the two countries.

This ammunition support has enabled the Russian military to maintain a sustained pace of artillery fire on the Ukrainian front at a time when its own industrial production was struggling to fully meet the demands of a protracted war of attrition—a critical logistical support during several phases of the conflict.

A Regime Depleting Its Own Strategic Stockpiles

This scale of ammunition transfers raises questions about the true state of North Korea’s strategic stockpiles, with some military analysts questioning the regime’s ability to simultaneously maintain its own deterrent capabilities against South Korea while supplying the Russian war effort on such a large scale.

However, this question remains difficult to answer with certainty, as North Korea remains one of the world’s most opaque regimes when it comes to disclosing its actual military capabilities, which complicates any precise assessment of the long-term sustainability of this cooperation.

I remain cautious about specific figures, given North Korea’s lack of transparency, but the logic is crystal clear: Kim is depleting his arsenals and sacrificing his soldiers because the price paid in return—the modernization of his army—is worth more to him than the lives of his own citizens.

Condemnations That Do Nothing to Stop It

Western capitals and South Korea have repeatedly condemned this military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow, calling it a flagrant violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions prohibiting any arms transfers involving North Korea. However, these condemnations have so far had no visible effect on the continuation of this alliance.

Russia’s systematic veto in the Security Council prevents any new binding international sanctions against this cooperation, illustrating the structural limitations of the multilateral system when faced with powers that deliberately choose to ignore the international norms they themselves helped establish in the past.

Seoul, on the Front Lines of Concern

South Korea views this cooperation with particular concern, aware that every technological advance Pyongyang achieves with Russia’s help directly alters the military balance on the Korean Peninsula, against a backdrop of tensions between the two Koreas that have remained high for decades.

This South Korean concern partly explains the recent intensification of Seoul’s military cooperation with its Western partners, particularly through its increased participation in multinational exercises such as RIMPAC—a direct response to North Korea’s technological advancement facilitated by Moscow.

I understand South Korea’s concern, and I share it. Every cruise missile tested by Kim using Russian technology brings the Korean Peninsula a little closer to a dangerous strategic imbalance in a region that is already heavily militarized.

Fighters Without a Voice or Recognition

Unlike Russian or Ukrainian soldiers, whose casualties receive media coverage—even if partial and disputed—North Korean soldiers who have fallen in Ukraine remain largely invisible, as their fate is never officially acknowledged by Pyongyang, which does not release any casualty statistics to its own people.

This total lack of transparency means that thousands of North Korean families are likely still unaware today of the true fate of their loved ones sent to fight in a country they probably don’t even know exists on a map, such is the extent of information control under Kim Jong Un’s regime.

A Total Dehumanization of Sacrifice

This invisibility is not a mere administrative oversight: it constitutes a deliberate policy of a regime that treats its own soldiers as disposable resources, whose deaths merit neither public recognition nor transparent compensation for the families concerned—unlike the practices observed in most other armies engaged in this conflict.

This reality, indirectly documented by South Korean and Western intelligence agencies through the analysis of troop movements and estimated casualties, illustrates the extent of the human cost that Kim Jong Un is willing to impose on his own people to secure technological and diplomatic gains.

My thoughts go out to those North Korean families who may never know what happened to their sons, sent to die on a distant front. This is perhaps the quietest and most chilling aspect of this war: nameless dead, with no recognized burial site, and not even the right to be mourned publicly.

Two destroyers a year: an ambitious goal

Kim Jong Un’s announcement to build two destroyers a year for five consecutive years represents a considerable industrial challenge for a country that has been subject to severe economic sanctions for decades, which theoretically limit its access to the materials and technologies necessary for such sustained naval production.

This ambition cannot reasonably be explained without technological—and likely material—support from Russia, confirming that military cooperation between the two countries extends far beyond the context of the conflict in Ukraine alone and is part of a structural and lasting transformation of North Korea’s military capabilities.

The Kang Kon: A Symbol of Ambition and Vulnerability

The destroyer Kang Kon, which underwent trials on July 4, had previously partially capsized during its launch ceremony—an incident rectified the previous year that publicly revealed certain persistent technical limitations of North Korea’s shipbuilding industry, despite the Russian support now available.

Its sister ship, the Choe Hyon, with a displacement of 5,000 metric tons, was commissioned at the end of last month, marking another step in North Korea’s naval buildup, which, if fully realized, would significantly alter the regional maritime balance of power in Northeast Asia.

I view the Kang Kon’s initial capsizing with some skepticism. It serves as a reminder that, despite Russian aid, North Korea’s military industry remains marked by decades of technological isolation—a legacy that a few technology transfers, however significant they may be, cannot erase overnight.

The Precedent Taiwan Fears

This military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow is also fueling concerns in Taiwan, where authorities are closely watching how authoritarian regimes are now coordinating their military efforts—a dynamic that could foreshadow similar support from North Korea or Russia to China in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

This fear of a coordinated authoritarian axis—encompassing Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea—is increasingly shaping Western strategic analysis, which no longer views these four regimes as isolated threats but as actors likely to support one another in the face of a Western-dominated international order.

A Test of Western Cohesion

Faced with this growing authoritarian coordination, Western partners—from the United States to Japan, South Korea, and the European Union—must now adapt their own security cooperation on a comparable scale, lest they find themselves strategically outmaneuvered by an adversarial alliance that is becoming increasingly integrated militarily and technologically.

This need to adapt partly explains the recent intensification of Western multinational military exercises, as well as the strengthening of bilateral and multilateral partnerships designed to counter this emerging authoritarian axis.

I believe the West must stop treating these issues separately. North Korea in Ukraine, China keeping an eye on Taiwan, Iran arming Russia: this is one and the same strategic problem, and it requires a coordinated response, not four isolated responses.

No Effective Channels for Negotiation

Unlike other geopolitical issues where diplomatic channels—even limited ones—allow for minimal dialogue, North Korea remains virtually impervious to any Western attempt at direct dialogue regarding its military cooperation with Russia—a diplomatic isolation that significantly limits the response options available to Western powers.

This lack of direct diplomatic leverage is pushing Western capitals to prioritize indirect responses—notably through strengthened sanctions against North Korean financial networks or increased support for South Korea—rather than hoping for direct negotiations with a regime that has historically been resistant to making any concessions.

A Stalemate That Could Last for Years

This diplomatic impasse is likely to persist as long as Kim Jong Un’s regime continues to reap tangible technological and political benefits from its cooperation with Moscow, without facing consequences severe enough to justify a strategic shift on its part.

This reality imposes a form of strategic resignation on Western powers, which are forced to acknowledge the limits of their influence over a regime that has made the constant defiance of the international order a central component of its own political survival for decades.

I have no magic solution to offer here, and I prefer to admit it rather than pretend otherwise. Faced with a regime as closed off as Kim’s, the West must accept its limitations while continuing to document and denounce, relentlessly, what is happening.

An Expensive but Indispensable Partner

For Vladimir Putin, the alliance with Pyongyang represents a pragmatic rather than an ideological strategic choice: faced with the depletion of its own human and material reserves after more than four years of war, the Kremlin needs every additional soldier and every additional shell that North Korea can provide, regardless of the technological cost it must pay in return.

This calculation reveals a form of Russian strategic vulnerability rarely acknowledged publicly by the Kremlin: a country that claims to rival the major Western powers must now rely on one of the poorest and most isolated regimes on the planet to sustain its war effort—an implicit admission of the real limits of Russian military power.

A Price Paid That Could Backfire on Moscow

By transferring advanced military technologies to North Korea, Russia is, in the long term, strengthening an unpredictable regime located in a highly sensitive region—a risky gamble whose consequences could one day backfire on Russia’s own strategic interests in Northeast Asia.

This risk, which several Western analysts have already highlighted, illustrates the limitations of an alliance built on tactical urgency rather than on long-term strategic convergence between two regimes that, aside from their shared opposition to the West, have few genuinely aligned interests.

I find it almost ironic that Putin, in seeking to address his own military weaknesses, is potentially arming a future strategic problem for his own region. Dictators who ally themselves out of necessity sometimes forget that their partners today may become their rivals tomorrow.

A border that remains open to trade

China, North Korea’s main trading partner and historic ally, observes this military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow without ever publicly condemning it—a passivity that indirectly facilitates the continued trade in human lives and ammunition across the Sino-North Korean border, which is essential to the already fragile economy of Kim Jong Un’s regime.

This lack of condemnation from China is not insignificant: it is part of a broader strategy in which Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang share a common interest in weakening Western influence, even if each pursues this goal using its own methods and priorities.

An axis that coordinates without declaring it

Western analysts increasingly agree that this configuration constitutes an informal axis among authoritarian regimes—one without a unified official treaty but with a convergence of interests strong enough to concern Western capitals about the possibility of more extensive future coordination in the face of simultaneous crises in various regions of the world.

This absence of a formal treaty in no way diminishes the operational reality of this coordination, as already demonstrated by the constant flow of ammunition, soldiers, and now naval technology between North Korea and Russia, under Beijing’s silent but acquiescent gaze.

I believe that China’s silence speaks louder than any official statement. Beijing does not need to sign a treaty to be complicit; it need only turn a blind eye to what crosses its border with North Korea.

North Korea’s Underestimated Expertise

While Western attention naturally focuses on the technologies Russia transfers to North Korea, the exchange also works in the opposite direction: some military analysts believe that Moscow also benefits from North Korean expertise in the mass production of low-cost artillery and ballistic missiles—industrial know-how developed by Pyongyang over decades of international sanctions.

This aspect of the exchange—which is less well-documented publicly than Russian technology transfers to North Korea—suggests that the alliance between the two regimes is based on a more complex reciprocity than a simple, one-sided barter of human lives for technology.

Cooperation That Could Deepen Further

Some experts fear that this technical and industrial cooperation will continue to deepen in the coming months, particularly if the war in Ukraine drags on and Russia’s need for ammunition and additional combat personnel remains high, thereby further strengthening the mutual dependence between the two regimes.

This growing dependence could, in the long run, permanently reshape the balance of power in Northeast Asia, well beyond the duration of the current conflict in Ukraine—a scenario that Western powers must now factor into their long-term strategic planning.

I believe the West still underestimates this technical interdependence. It is not only Kim who benefits from Putin; Putin is also learning from Kim how to produce cheap weapons on a large scale despite decades of sanctions.

Wagner: A Precedent That Sheds Light on the Present

The transactional logic underlying the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia is reminiscent, in some respects, of the model previously used by the Wagner paramilitary group, which recruited fighters under similar conditions—human lives exchanged for payment or political favors for its sponsors—before its founder fell from grace and met his death.

This continuity between Wagner’s practices and those observed today with North Korean troops suggests that the Kremlin has developed, over the course of this war, a genuine doctrine of outsourcing human sacrifice—whether involving Russian mercenaries or foreign soldiers provided by allied regimes seeking strategic concessions.

A dehumanization that permeates the entire Russian war system

This doctrine of externalization reveals a broader approach to warfare on Moscow’s part, in which the preservation of its own conventional Russian forces relies on the systematic use of auxiliary forces—whether mercenaries, Chechens, or now North Koreans—whose casualties structurally attract less domestic political attention in Russia.

This strategy, however effective it may be for Putin militarily in the short term, illustrates the profoundly instrumental nature of the Russian regime’s relationship with human life—whether Russian, North Korean, or Ukrainian—a common thread that has run through this entire war since its outbreak.

I see this continuity between Wagner and the North Korean troops as evidence of a system, not a coincidence. Putin has built a war machine that systematically outsources human sacrifice to preserve his own domestic popularity, regardless of who pays the price elsewhere.

A deal that will continue as long as it benefits both regimes

The military alliance between Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin illustrates, in its most brutal form, the transactional nature of relations between authoritarian regimes: North Korean lives traded for Russian military technology, with no regard for the actual human cost imposed on the families and soldiers involved. This dynamic will likely continue as long as it serves the immediate interests of both leaders.

A Reminder for the West

This cooperation should serve as a reminder to Western democracies that the war in Ukraine is no longer merely a conflict between Kyiv and Moscow, but is now part of a broader dynamic of coordination among authoritarian regimes—the consequences of which will extend far beyond Ukrainian territory alone if they are not taken seriously right now.

I’ll conclude with a thought for those anonymous North Korean soldiers, who died far from home for a regime that will never publicly acknowledge their sacrifice. Their story will remain one of the darkest and least-told chapters of this war.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist