Will DPRK casualties in Ukraine lead to change in North Korea?

Originally published on The Diplomat Asia-Pacific Current Affairs Magazine

At the beginning of November 2024, rumours of troop deployments to Russia started spreading among the residents of the North Korean city of Hyesan, on the border with China. Families feared that their own sons would have to fight in Ukraine, but without any official news from Pyongyang, they could not verify their worries. In a few days, the rumours spread from Hyesan to other regions through local merchants’ trade networks and border officials.

The rumours proved to be correct.

An agreement between Russia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), finalised in November 2024, saw the latter sending a reported 11,000 troops to the frontlines in Ukraine, with Russia providing them with supplies and a generous salary. While attention has been focused on the possibility of the North Korean regime acquiring new military and nuclear technologies, the domestic implications of such a deployment remain largely unexplored.

North Korean forces are suffering severe casualties in Ukraine, specifically around the Kursk region where most of them have been deployed on the frontlines. Ukraine and South Korea both have estimated that as much as 3,000, out of the initial 11,000, have already been reported dead or wounded.

This high level of military casualties is a result of several challenges facing the North Korean forces, including lack of appropriate training, especially on drone warfare, and them being treated as "expendable" and sent to "hopeless assaults" by the Russian forces. There have also been reports of suicide among North Korean soldiers, often to avoid capture by Ukrainian soldiers, in a culture that equates surrender to betrayal.

This unprecedented loss of life in a foreign conflict raises the question of whether the regime in North Korea can afford to sustain such casualties while maintaining domestic stability. Historical precedents and the internal dynamics of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, suggest that even losses at this scale are unlikely to threaten the regime's hold on power, but the war in Ukraine could be the most significant test since the 1990's famine.

Since the end of the Korean War in the early 1950s, the DPRK has from time to time provided support to ideological allies in foreign conflicts such as in Vietnam, Ethiopia, Yemen, Uganda, and Angola. Details of this support were often deliberately kept from public view, mindful of the potential domestic repercussions.

The biggest military commitment for North Korea, since the war on its peninsula, was its assistance to North Vietnam. At the time, Kim Il Sung authorised the deployment of up to 384 servicemen, comprising air force personnel, engineering experts specialising in cave and tunnel building, and a psychological operations group. This also included an air force regiment composed of pilots and specialists to man two MiG-17 companies and one MiG-21 company.

Vietnamese reports indicate that around 14 air force personnel died during the conflict, while North Korean sources claim 27 deaths. These discrepancies, along with North Korea's long silence about its involvement in Vietnam, reflect the regime's tight control over information. The deployment of pilots during the Vietnam War in the 1960s was only made public in 2000, a pattern evident in other North Korean foreign military interventions.

North Korea's current military involvement in Ukraine, however, presents unprecedented challenges for the regime's information control. Unlike in Vietnam, and Uganda, where casualties were limited and spread over a number of years, the scale of losses in Ukraine has been both massive, and concentrated in time and location. In previous interventions, the regime could have controlled information more easily, by relocating the affected families around the country or to Pyongyang. In Ukraine's case, moving thousands of families will inevitably reshape North Korean society, but also and more importantly, it will have an outsized impact on the military.

The regime's ability to manage this unprecedented situation with military casualties is further complicated by the Songun, or the 'military-first' policy that was enacted in the 1990s, and which intertwined Party and military interests ever since. Kim Jong Un's efforts to secure the personal loyalty of the Korean People's Army further cemented his regime's control on the domestic situation, however this relationship could be tested by the scale of these losses.

This concern is not entirely theoretical. In the 1990s, the VI Corps of the Korean People's Army were reportedly involved in an attempted coup d'etat against the regime. The coup was discovered and disrupted, while the leaders and those involved were quickly executed or arrested, and the Corps dismantled. The case was largely kept secret by the regime, but shows that even in a controlled system like North Korea, military loyalty cannot be taken for granted.

Aware of these vulnerabilities, Kim Jong Un made sure to keep the public in the dark regarding casualties in Ukraine, with families of the casualties only receiving limited details. The spread of the rumours of troop deployments in November 2024 first travelled to North Korea through China-made cell phones, and then through internal networks. The regime was quick to intensify its surveillance of users using Chinese frequencies along the border, showing how quickly it can work when it recognises a threat to its control of information that could undermine its propaganda on the war.

A senior military official inside North Korea told Daily NK that the regime has been receiving casualty figures through the military command, with these being tightly controlled by the Supreme Command of the Korean People's Army. When asked how widely these casualty figures were shared within the military ranks, the senior military official revealed that the regime is preparing "indoctrination activities" to be delivered to the units that have been deployed to Russia "since authorities predict potential individual unrest or rumours”.

Recognising the potential unrest that could result in disclosing the real number of fatalities, the regime is planning a number of events, "to maintain the military’s psychological stability" in a post-war scenario, designed to "evoke patriotism", according to this senior military official.

The regime's attempt at controlling information has only been further complicated with the capture of two North Korean soldiers by Ukraine's special operations forces. One of the POWs had a Russian military ID card, a common strategy by DPRK "to prevent and hinder enemy forces from gathering intelligence". Despite this, the SBU and South Korean intelligence confirm that North Korean forces have experienced heavy losses, and possible lack of supplies, with one POW claiming to have gone four or five days without food and water before being captured.

Leveraging the strategic value of these North Korean POWs, President Zelensky said that North Korean soldiers "who express a desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korean will be given" an opportunity to settle in Ukraine.

As more North Korean POWs are captured and details of DPRK's military strategy in Ukraine become public, this information will likely permeate North Korean society and its military ranks. While the Kim regime seems to be currently adapting to the events in Ukraine and address them accordingly, the growing awareness might force it to address growing domestic concerns. This might mean potentially having to abandon or reform the country's traditional ideology of self-reliance (Juche) in favour of more economic pragmatism, similar to China opening up to market-based reforms in the late 1970s.

This potential transformation faces significant challenges. Even if the regime can maintain stability through economic pragmatism, a 'strategic Juche' is conditioned on a Russian win in Ukraine, as well as Russia's own economic wellbeing. If North Korea's involvement in Ukraine continues to be disastrous, it could undermine any potential benefits from its Russian alliance. The combination of military losses and fighting a foreign war could trigger domestic instability through growing disillusionment in both military ranks and broader society.