The State Duma, the Russian chamber of deputies, ratified this Wednesday the comprehensive strategic partnership treaty between Russia and North Koreasigned in Pyongyang on June 19. This opens the possibility that North Korea enters the Ukraine war contributing personnel to the Russian ranks.
The Russian Government has justified this alliance by claiming that it is not an offensive pact, but a defensive one. Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko has insisted in the parliamentary debate that it derives from the “alarming” political and military trends at a global level.
He Pentagon He said this Wednesday that he was aware for the first time of the presence of North Korean troops in Russian territory. The US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, described the grouper “very serious” escalation deployment on Russian soil and added that “it remains to be seen” what exactly they are doing and for what specific purposes they are training.
The fourth largest army in the world
The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) estimates that Pyongyang has already sent some 3,000 soldiers to Russian territory, where they are theoretically preparing to be transferred to the Ukrainian front, as parliamentarians in Seoul reported this Wednesday. The NIS considers that By December, some 10,000 could have been deployed to Ukraine soldiers.
In terms of military power, North Korea ranks 36th out of 145 of the countries analyzed in 2024 by Global Fire Power. Its population exceeds 26 million people. Of them, almost 2 million are military personnel. There are 1,320,000 active and 560,000 remain in reserve. That is, about 10% of its population would be prepared to go to war. The air force is made up of 110,000 troops and the navy, 60,000.
About 10% of North Korea’s population would be prepared to go to war
The North Korean Army It has 6,000 tanks and more than 2,000 artillery pieces, including rocket launchers and cannons. The country’s air force has 951 aircraft, including 440 fighters, 132 attack aircraft and 205 helicopters. According to Global Fire Power, the navy has 505 warships. Among them there are 1 frigate, 4 corvettes and 35 submarines.
The North Korean regime possesses the nuclear weapon. It has at least 30 nuclear warheads, according to data collected by the Stockholm International Institute (SIPRI). It is thus the ninth country in the world with the most warheads. Other sources raise the number of warheads to between 40 and 50.
North Korean artillery systems have almost 6,000 large weapons within range of South Korea’s major population centers, according to a 2020 report by the Rand Corp think tank. They present as great a danger to South Korea as Kim’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
North Korean artillery for Russia
Various sources in South Korea, the United States and Ukraine consider it proven that since 2023 Pyongyang has supplied Moscow with millions of 122 and 125 millimeter artillery rounds and tactical missiles whose remains have been located on the front.
North American and South Korean intelligence estimate that Kim Jong-un’s regime would have sent 6,700 containers of weapons to Russia. They would carry inside, according to the South Korean Ministry of Defense, about three million projectiles of 152 mm artillery or half a million 122 mm.
Pyongyang is believed to have sent 6,700 containers containing some three million projectiles to Moscow.
At the beginning of October, Guardian reported that “dozens” of North Korean military engineers They had been deployed to assist Russia in launching Pyongyang’s KN-23 missiles. The British newspaper cited an anonymous Ukrainian source.
In February, kyiv’s SBU security service claimed that Russia had fired more than 20 Hwasong-11 missiles against Ukraine since late December, killing at least two dozen civilians. This missile is believed to be similar to the Russian Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile, which has sparked speculation about Moscow’s role in the development of the weapon, account Newsweek.
According to this North American media, which cites the South Korean television network TV Chosun, North Korea would have sent pilots that can handle Russian warplanes to join the war in Ukraine.
