LONDON: Since the start of the war there has been a convergence of interests between Russia and North Korea. Put simply, Moscow has an acute need for munitions and Pyongyang is a willing supplier.
History is replete with unintended consequences. When President Vladimir Putin ordered the illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago, few would have foreseen any benefit to the dictator living in Pyongyang. Even the all-knowing Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un himself, the “Respected Father” of North Korea, would most probably not have seen any value at the time. Now, a desperate Putin has suddenly become Kim’s best friend, and as a result North Korea’s calamitously failing economy is beginning to see an upturn.
Since the start of the war there has been a convergence of interests between Russia and North Korea. Put simply, Moscow has an acute need for munitions and Pyongyang is a willing supplier. Satellite imagery has shown a plethora of cargo ships loaded with hundreds of containers at a time scuttling back and forth between the North Korean port of Ragin and the nearby Russian military port of Vostochny. The South Korean government recently reported that it had evidence of North Korea sending 6,700 containers of munitions to Russia and that Pyongyang’s weapons factories were operating at full-tilt.
While Russia and North Korea have denied any trade in munitions, intelligences sources in the US, UK and South Korea had proof that more than a million ammunition shells and grad rockets, those that can be fired out of trucks in large volleys, have been sold to Russia, filling the coffers of Pyongyang. Joseph Byrne, a North Korea expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, told the BBC “the shells and rockets delivered by North Korea to Russia are some of the most sought-after things in the world today and are allowing Moscow to keep pounding Ukrainian cities at a time when the US and Europe have been faltering over what weapons to contribute”.
Hard evidence has now been obtained by Ukraine that in addition to artillery shells, North Korea is supplying Russia with modern ballistic missiles. In recent months dozens have been fired by Russia into Ukrainian territory, killing hundreds of innocent civilians and injuring many more. In early January an unusual missile crashed into a building in Kharkhiv, Ukraine’s second largest city close to the Russian border. Fortunately, a considerable amount of the mangled debris was collected and analysed by the Ukrainian Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a specialist organisation which retrieves weapons used during the war and works out how and where they are made. Printed on the metal were characters from the Korean alphabet including the number 112, which corresponds to the year 2023 in the North Korean calendar. From all the evidence CAR researchers concluded that this missile was most likely the Hwasong 11, capable of travelling more than 400 miles and believed to be Pyongyang’s most sophisticated short-range missile. It was the first clear proof that Russia is using munitions obtained from North Korea.
What was even more startling to the researchers was the huge quantity of electronic components in the debris which had recently been manufactured in the US and Europe. There was even a computer chip fabricated in the US in 2023. Given that the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on North Korea after the country withdrew from the Nuclear-Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 following its resumptions of nuclear tests, how is it possible that Pyongyang could develop such a thriving defence industry and obtain such critical technology? Part of the answer lies in North Korea’s illicit activities such as the manufacture and sale of illegal drugs and counterfeit consumer goods that bring in foreign exchange to advance the country’s nuclear and conventional weapons programme. Cybertheft is another source of revenue for North Korea. In 2022, North Korean hackers stole cryptocurrency to the value of $1.7 billion which was then used to feed fake companies set up in Hong Kong or other central Asian countries. These companies are able to buy products, such as washing machines and phones, which are full of the very same electronic chips required for modern weapons and which are then exported to North Korea via China. Because of the huge scale of production, manufacturers of this “dual-use technology” usually have no idea where their products end up.
It’s also clear that Russia is complicit in breaking sanctions on North Korea. Last summer, the Russian tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets carried a revealing piece quoting the chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, Fyodor Lukyanov. Reminding readers of the 2006 UN Security Council arms embargo on North Korea, Lukyanov said: “of course, the UN sanctions are legitimate. It’s hard to deny that. We voted for them. But the situation has changed. Why not revoke our vote?” Shortly after, in July 2023 Sergei Shoigu became the first Russian defence minister to visit North Korea since the break-up of the Soviet Union, visiting a defence exhibition escorted by Kim Jong-Un. The deepening defence cooperation between the two countries became clear the following September when Kim travelled by secure train to meet President Putin in Moscow, where the two visited key military and technology sites. Three months later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, visited North Korea just days after Washington had expressed concerns that Pyongyang was supplying Moscow with weapons and advanced technology in return for a range of military assistance.
From this flurry of activity, it soon became clear that Moscow had decided to violate the very sanctions it once voted for. What’s more, by using its veto on 25 March this year Moscow effectively disbanded a UN panel that monitored sanction breaches, in order to avoid any scrutiny of the Kremlin’s activities.
What is concerning many Asian countries is that North Korea is getting the chance to test its latest missiles in a real-war scenario for the first time, obtaining data that will help improve them. Even more worrying is that the war is providing Pyongyang with a shop window to the world for its munitions. Being a mass-producer it will want to sell these to a range of rogue states untroubled by breaking UN sanctions, setting Russia as the example. A confident Kim Jong-Un will attempt to secure links with Iran on its nuclear programme as well as becoming a big supplier of missiles to countries in the China-Russia-Iran bloc.
Will this relationship, strengthened by the war in Ukraine, last? The jury is out on this question, but nothing in the long history of Moscow-Pyongyang relations suggests that a stable, close or effective partnership is likely, whether in arms or elsewhere. China will remain the dominant outside player in Pyongyang, a role it achieved more subtly than the panic attack in Moscow caused by the unexpected defence of their country by the Ukrainian military. Both Shoigu and Lavrov proposed some form of triple alliance between North Korea, Russia and China, during their visits, but this is unlikely. When the war is over, the love affair between Vlad and Kim will wane and the Respected Father’s eyes will once again be exclusively gazing at Xi.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.