The South Korean Defense Intelligence Agency has documented over 13,000 shipping containers, believed to contain weapons, traveling from North Korea to Russia throughout the course of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a South Korean lawmaker revealed Tuesday.
Rep. Kang Dae-sik of the ruling conservative People Power Party made the report public this week, which catalogues shipping containers leaving North Korean ports toward Russia since mid-2022. The report follows the debut this week of North Korea’s alleged suicide drones, or loitering munitions, which many foreign observers speculated were developed with the aid of Russia. It also follows Russia and North Korea signing a mutual defense treaty during a visit by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang in June, which raised concern that North Korea would soon become directly embroiled in the Ukraine invasion.
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Russia began its offensive colonization of Ukraine in March 2014 with the seizure of the Crimean peninsula. In February 2022, it dramatically escalated the violence by announcing a “special military operation” to oust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, branding the Jewish leader a “Nazi” and declaring him illegitimate despite the lack of evidence of an irregularities in the 2019 presidential election, which he won. The “special operation” continues today, though not without imposing a significant price on Russia, which has deployed major military resources and lost some territory on its border to Ukraine in the past month.
Communist North Korea, one of the world’s most belligerent and repressive regimes, has enthusiastically supported the Ukraine invasion since it began. It has not claimed publicly to send munitions or troops to Russia, instead lending moral support on the international stage. This weekend, for example, the north Korean government published a “white paper” condemning the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for its support of Ukraine.
“The 75-year history of NATO, stained with merciless massacre and war records, goes to prove that it is a criminal group of heinous hegemonic forces obsessed with the ambition for domination over the whole,” the regime denouced. “The present Ukrainian crisis is the latest instance eloquently proving the unchangeable sinister intention of NATO to dominate the world and hold global supremacy.”
The South Korean news outlet Yonhap reported on Tuesday that, according to Rep. Kang’s report, the 13,000 shipping containers documented to have traveled to Russia could “hold more than 6 million 152-millimeter artillery shells.”
“The military suspects the North could have supplied Russia with 122-mm artillery rounds, mobile anti-air missiles and anti-tank missiles, among other weapons,” Yonhap noted. The outlet quoted the Defense Intelligence Agency as stating that it has observed Russia moving “to formalize North Korea as a supply base for weapons and ammunition,” expecting the Ukraine “special operation” to become a long-term project.
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South Korean intelligence officials estimated in March that North Korea had sent 7,000 such containers to Russia, meaning that, if the intelligence is correct, Pyongyang has dramatically accelerated the pace of its exporting.
The report appears consistent with accusations out Kyiv and Washington that North Korea is participating in the invasion. On Monday, Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder described the communist nation as “complicit” in the Ukraine war.
“I don’t have any information to provide in terms of specifics of North Korea providing missiles or launchers to Russia other than to say that, look, we know that Russia and North Korea have this burgeoning relationship,” Ryder told reporters during a Pentagon briefing, “that they have provided capabilities, to include munitions, to Russia for employment in Ukraine, which, again, demonstrates the fact that North Korea is — is complicit in this illegal Russian invasion.”
Ryder added that the United States is “keeping a very close eye” on that bilateral relationship.
In Ukraine, President Zelensky accused North Korea of aiding efforts against his country on Monday in a plea to his Western allies to remove limitations on using their weapons to strike within Russia.
“Defenders of life should face no restrictions on weapons, while Russia uses all kinds of its own weapons, as well as ‘Shahed’ drones and ballistic missiles from North Korea,” Zelensky demanded.
North Korea is believed to be benefitting from supplying the Russian military with technology sharing. On Monday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) – North Korea’s top state propaganda outlet – published photos of communist dictator Kim Jong-un alongside what it claimed to be North Korean suicide drones. Kim took the pictures at an alleged weapons test in which the suicide drones successfully hit their targets.
“It is necessary to develop and produce more suicide drones of various types to be used in tactical infantry and special operation units,” Kim was quoted as saying.
Suicide drones – essentially bombs that can be easily navigated towards a particular target – have become a stable of the Russian war on Ukraine, particularly Iran’s “Shahed” class of suicide drones. Some observers described the images of the North Korean alleged drones as similar to the Russian Lancet-3 models of the same weapon, suggesting Russian scientists helped in the development phase.
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