North Korea has emerged as an increasingly valuable partner to the United States’ leading adversaries, including Russia and Iran, as they engage in conflicts with nations backed by the U.S. and its allies.
While often dismissed in the West as a backward and isolated power dependent on China, North Korea has amassed an expansive and increasingly advanced arsenal of weapons, and it has a history of aiding foreign partners caught up in conflicts abroad. Now, with North Korean arms and personnel appearing on the battlefield in Europe and recent overtures in the Middle East, the nuclear-armed nation appears poised to further boost its role on the world stage with big benefits for Pyongyang and new headaches for Washington.
“North Korea is obviously in a situation right now where they basically want to have a bit more of a role beyond the peninsula,” Samuel Ramani, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told Newsweek.
“They are in a unique position, where they’re no longer just relying on Chinese patronage, they can now play Russia and China off each other, which is what they did during that large portion of the Cold War, particularly during the Sino-Soviet split and its aftermath,” he added. “They also want to diversify their partnerships.”
But the country still on the front lines of one of the Cold War’s longest running disputes has begun making moves that exceed even its most proactive deployments decades ago. The U.S. and NATO have estimated that up to 10,000 North Korean personnel have arrived to back Russia’s war effort against Ukraine, marking the largest deployment of North Korean personnel since the Korean War that ravaged the shared peninsula from 1950 to 1953.
“This is a very, very significant move for the North Koreans, and it’s not one that we should be taking as any kind of continuity,” Ramani said, “even when they were involved in support of socialist allies in the past.”
Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty
A New Eurasian Alliance
The relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang dates back to the very foundation of North Korea as a Soviet satellite state opposite U.S.-backed South Korea when the peninsula was first divided by the rival superpowers at the end of World War II. The Soviet Union and newly communist-ruled China intervened in support of North Korea during its three-year war with South Korea and a U.S.-led international coalition that ended in a virtual stalemate and no lasting peace.
Pyongyang maintained close ties to both Beijing and Moscow throughout the Cold War and dedicated troops and advisers to participate in conflicts such as the Vietnam War and Angolan Civil War, both of which resulted in socialist victories. North Korea’s relations with two communist giants survived their split that began in the 1960s, though then-Supreme Leader Kim Il Sung, grandfather of the current ruler, steadily grew closer to the latter as he also worked to develop a distinct national ideology based on fierce self-reliance.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, however, led to massive disruptions in North Korea’s economy exacerbated by a large-scale famine in the 1990s. Pyongyang gradually grew closer to Beijing in the years that followed but continued to foster ties with Moscow as Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to restore his nation’s superpower status in the 21st century.
When Russia launched its war in Ukraine in February 2022, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un was one of the few world leaders to openly support Putin and echo his justifications of seeking to combat NATO expansion in Europe. Later that same year, U.S. officials accused North Korea of providing munitions to Russia, but the situation took a drastic turn this June when Putin and Kim signed an unprecedented mutual defense treaty.
“A military partnership has been established in Asia for the first time among nations that are not friendly towards the United States,” Alexey Maslov, director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University, told Newsweek. “This is the result of many years of confrontation and the inability to establish a dialogue.”
“The longer the conflict in Eastern Europe continues and the greater the support from the United States and European countries for Ukraine,” he added, “the more countries will align with Russia in military and strategic cooperation.”
The resulting alliance has the potential to provide key benefits to both sides.
“North Korea can provide Russia with arms and military assistance, and in return, North Korea’s military can acquire valuable experience in real combat situations,” Maslov said. “Russia has long been a proponent of limiting Pyongyang’s military power and opposing the use of nuclear weapons. However, a sudden shift in the global situation has revealed that Pyongyang’s behavior model can be effective during crucial circumstances.”
Already, beginning in 2022, China and Russia had begun to withdraw their support for international sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, drawing concerns not just from the U.S. but for its East Asian allies South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), and Japan.
With inter-Korean tensions only rising since the collapse of U.S.-backed peace talks in 2019, Kim has found a willing partner in Putin as he also faces Western sanctions due to the war in Ukraine and a lack of support from existing defense allies of the post-Soviet Collective Security Treaty Organization, save for Belarus.
As Maslov pointed out, the enhanced partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang has the potential to further degrade the waning effectiveness of sanctions on both powers. The result could see Russia’s far east benefit from low-cost labor from North Korea, which may in turn receive sorely needed international investment.
Moreover, the alliance represents a united front at a time when Russia and North Korea view themselves as being involved in a broader global confrontation with the U.S. and its allies.
“It is crucial to comprehend the reason behind the sudden surge in cooperation between Putin and Kim,” Maslov said. “Both countries feel they are not adequately represented in global matters and are taking a strong stance to address this concern.”
“The nations share a deep historical and spiritual bond and prefer not to be seen as outcasts,” he added. “Both countries have been subjected to monstrous isolationist measures, and this has brought them even closer together. In the absence of effective economic mechanisms, military-political pressure takes center stage.”
Korean Central News Agency
Risks and Opportunities
Christopher Chivvis, former U.S. national intelligence officer serving now as senior fellow and director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank’s American Statecraft Program, identified some ways in which the newly fortified partnership between Russia and North Korea, officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), could manifest on the battlefield.
“North Korea has provided Russia with large numbers of artillery rounds—perhaps as many as 5 million shells over the last year—which Russia badly needs to sustain its war effort,” Chivvis told Newsweek. “To put this in context, this is more than Russia is estimated to be able to produce domestically in that time. It is possible that North Korea might also begin manufacturing munitions specifically for the war, thus expanding Russia’s defense industrial base.”
“Now the DPRK has sent soldiers to fight in the war,” Chivvis said. “This is obviously also important, as a symbol of the deepening ties between the two countries and because manpower has been such a key factor in the conflict.”
He noted that the effectiveness of the North Korean contribution to the war effort remained to be seen. Also still undetermined is the scope of Moscow’s assistance to Pyongyang, which, beyond financial support, could include knowledge-sharing on military systems, including nuclear-capable platforms of which Kim has overseen a major modernization in recent years.
Nonetheless, “it’s a significant development,” Chivvis said.
But there are also substantial risks involved for both Moscow and Pyongyang as they navigate a new, more direct form of cooperation tied to the deadliest war to hit Europe since World War II.
Jong Eun Lee, former South Korean Air Force intelligence officer who now serves as an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C., identified three separate sets of separate challenges for both sides.
Among the primary concerns for North Korea are the risks of forces suffering significant casualties or becoming exposed to new ideas beyond the nation’s notoriously closed off society, potentially even seeking to defect to the West. Russia may also call for greater commitments of North Korean troops in the future, exacerbating these risks, and, finally, the sudden surge in cooperation with Moscow may upset Pyongyang’s efforts to balance its ties with Beijing, which has taken a more neutral stance on the war in Ukraine.
For Russia, the leading concern is whether the addition of even tens of thousands of more troops from abroad could ultimately sway the outcome of a war that has already involved hundreds of thousands of personnel on both sides. North Korean forces may also face significant language and culture barriers that impede effective integration between the two militaries, particularly with no record of official bilateral training. In any case, there’s also the matter of satisfying North Korea’s reciprocal demands.
“Why does Russia need 10,000 North Korean troops in the first place? It may signal Russia’s own difficulty in reinforcing its troops that have suffered high casualties from the war with Ukraine,” Lee told Newsweek. “If Russia’s need for troops is the main factor driving North Korea’s troop deployment, North Korea has more bargaining leverage to extract transactional concessions from Russia (such as assistance for space, satellite, and nuclear technology).”
Still, Lee said, North Korea’s contribution could prove helpful to Russia even if not primarily dedicated to the battlefield.
“Even if not for combat operations,” Lee said, “North Koreans may be used for other missions such as guarding the logistics points and bases, protecting technicians and engineers in the rear, and assisting in constructing fortifications.”
Andrey Gubin, professor at Russia’s Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok and China’s Jilin University, also highlighted the existence of “interoperability issues” between the Russian Armed Forces and the Korean People’s Army. But he said tangible progress was being made toward stronger links as part of an effort he argued was not necessarily targeting the U.S. and its allies.
“Moscow and Pyongyang are definitely getting closer in the military domain, considering Article 4 of the new security Treaty, as well as practical interest in obtaining Russian advanced technologies and examining combat experience,” Gubin told Newsweek. “Nonetheless, such a rapprochement isn’t aimed for any nation, and is more on protecting the peace on Korean Peninsula.”
“The European security is far beyond from there,” Gubin said. “The problem is that ROK, Japan and the U.S. felt discomfort, and would inevitably enhance their respective military capacities, which initiates ‘security dilemma’ situation once again after the Cold War.”
The reaction of these three countries presents another risk for both North Korea and Russia, especially as South Korea mulls stepping up its own role in the form of direct military assistance to Ukraine amid appeals for greater international aid from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Such a decision, however, comes with its own set of complications.
“As South Korean officials suspected the DPRK forces would have been dispatched to assist the Russian Army, they claimed some direct aid to Zelensky’s regime could be possible, including lethal weapons delivery,” Gubin said. “Nonetheless, here the most important questions are—who will pay, for instance, for Korean AD batteries, and what is the rationale of such a gesture, except to annoy Moscow and freeze even nowadays subtle bilateral contacts?”
Vahid Salemi/AP
North Korea in the Middle East
The impact of the Russia-North Korea partnership may resound far beyond Europe and East Asia. Pyongyang’s latest moves come amid an even deeper-rooted break with Washington following the collapse of 2018-2019 peace talks alongside the U.S. and South Korea and a hardening of its stance against U.S. interests across the globe, including in the Middle East.
“The main reason of the DPRK’s refusal of the U.S. former suggestion of the compete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization was the total lack of the security guarantees,” Gubin said. “Moreover, after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and witnessed numerous humanitarian intervention globally, the North Korean leadership fortified its confidence in deterrence and retaliation as the basic instrument for providing with regime’s survival.”
“Besides enhancing its own nuclear missile potential, Pyongyang also demonstrated its commitment to strategic partners to gain more international support,” he added. “After the world finally divided in 2022, Kim revitalized ties with Russia, Iran, some other countries. Simultaneously, the ruling Party expressed firm stance on Russia-Ukraine, Palestine-Israel oppositions in a purely anti-Western rhetoric.”
North Korea has never recognized Israel and long supported forces opposed to it. In addition to sending troops and advisers to support the Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria in the 1973 Yom Kippur War with Israel, North Korea provided arms to the Palestine Liberation Organization to engage in a protracted guerrilla war against Israel in the 1970s.
In more recent decades, North Korean weapons have ended up in the hands of various factions of the Iran-aligned Axis of Resistance, including the Palestinian Hamas, Lebanese Hezbollah movement and Yemeni Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis. Such munitions tied to Pyongyang have surfaced during the current conflict these forces are engaged in with Israel since October of last year.
North Korea also has a strong record of direct cooperation with Iran dating back the 1980s, when the Islamic Republic faced an existential war with neighboring Iraq, led by longtime President Saddam Hussein. Still reeling from the global backlash to its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran found few partners to acquire military aid throughout the bloody eight-year war, with the notable exceptions of Beijing and Pyongyang.
“The foundations of the close relationships between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the People’s Republic of China, as well as Iran’s relationship with North Korea, can be traced back to the 1980s, specifically during the Iran-Iraq War,” Amir Mohammed Esmaeili, author, researcher and Ph.D. candidate at Shanghai International Studies University in China, told Newsweek.
“Amid an arms embargo imposed on Tehran, both Eastern and Western blocs provided military support to Saddam Hussein, prompting Iran to seek alternative alliances to bolster its defense capabilities,” he added. “During this period, Iran strengthened its defense and security ties with Beijing and Pyongyang, securing essential military support to counter Iraqi forces.”
In the years that followed, he said, “these relationships gradually deepened in strategic cooperation.”
Notable signs of cooperation between Iran and North Korea include the vast similarities between Iran’s Ghadir-class submarines and North Korean Yono-class designs as well as between variants of Iran’s Shahab missile family and North Korea’s Hwasong and Nodong lines, as referenced by Chivvis and Ramani.
“This is a partnership that’s been going on for about 45 years,” Ramani said. “It’s got technological components, a lot of anti-Western solidarity and obviously I do think it’s natural assessment that when relations between Iran and the West are very poor, they will gravitate towards North Korea in a big way, and that’s why we should be watching developments as they unfold.”
The potential for further cooperation today comes at a time when Iran, like Russia and North Korea, has grown largely disillusioned with the prospect of rebuilding ties with the West. While then-President Donald Trump was pursuing an ultimately unrealized nuclear deal with North Korea in 2018, he abandoned the existing multilateral agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and other world powers.
“Although Iran initially sought to rekindle its relations with the West through the JCPOA,” Esmaeili said, “the U.S. withdrawal from the accord, followed by a stringent maximum pressure campaign, led Iranian political and academic elites to a shared conviction: that national interests would be better advanced through a ‘Look to the East’ policy.”
The result has seen greater focus from China, North Korea and Russia in expanding collaboration with Iran.
Beijing and Tehran forged a 25-year cooperation agreement in 2021 largely focused on the development of Iranian infrastructure, including crucial sectors such as oil and gas. China went on to further demonstrate its growing influence in the region by overseeing a deal that restored ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023, a relationship that has held despite the regional conflict that erupted months later.
In April of this year, just as the dust settled from the first round of direct attacks between Iran and Israel, Tehran also received its first official delegation from Pyongyang in nearly five years. A North Korean delegation also attended the swearing-in ceremony of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in late July, after which fellow attendee Hamas Political Bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in a murky attack widely attributed to Israel.
North Korean officials and state media have meanwhile ramped up their condemnation of Israel and support of Iran, whose officials have called for greater cooperation with North Korea in recent years.
Russia-Iran relations have especially been in the spotlight. The two powers worked directly together during their respective efforts to support the Syrian government in the country’s ongoing civil war that erupted in 2011 and have again shored up cooperation in the wake of the war in Ukraine, even if Tehran does not formally back Moscow’s position on the conflict.
Prior to news of North Korea’s deployment, U.S. officials accused Iran of sending military engineers to Russia to aid in the operation of Iranian Shahed suicide drones that have frequently been used by Russian forces against Ukraine. Last month, the White House said that Iran was planning to send short-range missiles to Russia, an allegation denied by both sides.
Iran, meanwhile, has long sought to procure Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems from Russia, though there has been no confirmation of deliveries taking place. Building upon past experience, Pyongyang may yet again prove a viable alternative to provide weapons and expertise to Tehran and its allies.
“The easiest area of collaboration for North Korea will be continued arms sales,” Lee said. “It is in North Korea’s economic interest (and strategic interest) to continue to export arms to Iran, Hamas and other Middle East actors hostile toward the West.”
“There are of course, also possibilities of expansion of technological cooperation between Iran and North Korea,” he added. “The two countries may exchange technologies on drones, missiles, nuclear armament.”
Iran has long denied any intention to weaponize its nuclear program despite the acceleration of uranium enrichment and other measures criticized by the U.S. and Israel in the wake of the JCPOA’s effective collapse. The intensification of Iran’s clash with Israel, however, has been accompanied by an unprecedented swell of debate over rethinking Iran’s official stance when it comes to nuclear weapons.
North Korea, which defied international criticism and sanctions to press forward with nuclear weapons development to great success, is also believed to have played a lesser-known role in other nuclear programs in the Middle East. When Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear site in 2007, 10 North Korean scientists were reportedly killed in the strikes.
As discussions of Israeli attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities arise in the context of the current conflict, Lee said that Pyongyang may be interested in observing the performance of Iranian military hardware in action.
“For North Korea,” Lee said, “the potential Iran-Israel conflict may also be an opportunity to observe how well Iran’s weapons fare against the Israel/West/South Korea air defense system.”
ED JONES/AFP/Getty Images
The China Question
Yet China’s potentially crucial position remains uncertain when it comes to a new North Korean approach to wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East. As Lee pointed out, a more assertive North Korea could upset the careful balancing act that Kim has long played between Moscow and Beijing, which Gubin noted is traditionally averse to outbreaks of unrest.
“The major unknown is the position of China, as it used to be the only formal ally of the DPRK since 1961, and is rather cautious and general in assessments, advocating for peaceful resolution through negotiations, keeping the reasonable distance from all the outbreaks,” Gubin said. “Evidently, Beijing won’t be happy from turmoil in Northeast Asia, disrupting its attempts to boost cooperation with ROK and Japan.”
Chivvis, for his part, said that China “would probably not be happy with North Korea becoming more belligerent.”
Ramani, too, felt Chinese officials “are not necessarily too happy” about North Korea’s latest moves, but at the same time, they “are not necessarily against it.”
“The Chinese are not supportive of this actively, but they’re also not going to be working against it,” Ramani said, “and they’re going to try to see what they can do to maximize their own self-interest, while remaining vigilant of the fact that now North Korea will on issues like nuclear policy, on issues on how to escalate in the region, will be taking input and advice from both Moscow and Beijing and deciding which advice is better.”
“Beijing doesn’t have that kind of veto power that they may have had in the past,” he added.
Newsweek has reached out to the Chinese Embassy to the U.S., the Iranian Mission to the U.N., the North Korean Mission to the U.N. and the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment.
Even with Beijing at present playing an undersized role, Ramani said that a combination of overlapping interests and mutual pushback against U.S. policies have prompted a level of cooperation between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea that works to severely undermine U.S. interests.
“The worst-case scenario is pretty much what we’re seeing in Ukraine on a daily basis,” Ramani said. “We’re seeing North Korean troops, Iranian drones, Chinese semiconductors and Russian regulars all working together in one conflict at the same time, day in and day out.”
“So, this is definitely an indictment of U.S. policy to some extent of what happens when you kind of coerce or put maximum pressure on all four of these countries at once,” he added.