From my vantage point, the arrival of roughly ten to twelve thousand North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk sector since late 2024 signals a risky yet calculated gamble by Pyongyang: Kim Jong Un is trading his soldiers’ blood for hard currency, fuel, food and, most importantly, Russian missile, air defense and submarine know-how while exposing his army to a drone-saturated, precision-fire battlefield it has never faced. These forces, often disguised in Russian uniforms and hurled into frontal assaults, have suffered over six thousand casualties yet earned Kremlin praise for plugging manpower gaps after Ukraine’s brief cross-border push; in return, Moscow shields the North at the UN and pledges to modernize its arsenal. The bargain is already warping security equations from Kyiv to Seoul, alarming NATO and Asian capitals that a battle-hardened, better-armed DPRK could emerge from the conflict and that the war has now tightly fused European and Indo-Pacific theaters.
From my vantage point, the arrival of roughly ten to twelve thousand North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk sector since late 2024 signals a risky yet calculated gamble by Pyongyang: Kim Jong Un is trading his soldiers’ blood for hard currency, fuel, food and, most importantly, Russian missile, air defense and submarine know-how while exposing his army to a drone-saturated, precision-fire battlefield it has never faced. These forces, often disguised in Russian uniforms and hurled into frontal assaults, have suffered over six thousand casualties yet earned Kremlin praise for plugging manpower gaps after Ukraine’s brief cross-border push; in return, Moscow shields the North at the UN and pledges to modernize its arsenal. The bargain is already warping security equations from Kyiv to Seoul, alarming NATO and Asian capitals that a battle-hardened, better-armed DPRK could emerge from the conflict and that the war has now tightly fused European and Indo-Pacific theaters.