North Korea's Profitable War: Why Pyongyang Will Keep Sending Soldiers to Russia

In the frozen fields of Russia's Kursk region at the end of 2024, North Korean soldiers appeared on the battlefield in waves. They moved differently than their Russian counterparts—constantly shifting position, pressing forward in successive assault groups of fifteen to twenty men, seemingly indifferent to the drone strikes and automatic fire that cut them down. Ukrainian soldiers who faced them called them cannon fodder. What they witnessed was the first large-scale deployment of North Korean combat troops overseas in decades, and it came at a staggering cost: as many as 3,000 killed from the initial force of 13,000 sent by Pyongyang.

Yet despite those losses, North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un has committed to sending more. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned last month that up to 50,000 additional North Korean troops are being prepared for deployment in Russia, a dramatic escalation from an earlier estimate of 30,000. The question that follows is not whether North Korea will send them—but why, after such bloodshed, the country would double down on this commitment. The answer lies in the extraordinary economic and geopolitical returns the arrangement has already generated.

When North Korean soldiers first clashed with Ukrainian forces in November 2024, neither Russia nor North Korea acknowledged their presence. The troops came from the Storm Corps, the elite of North Korea's military, a force drawn from a totalitarian state where soldiers are heavily indoctrinated and willing to die for their leader. Ukrainian soldiers who captured and interrogated them found they carried almost nothing—no personal documents, no identification, nothing but ammunition. Some lacked body armor, winter clothing, and helmets. When wounded and surrounded, several chose to detonate grenades rather than surrender, calling out Kim Jong Un's name with their last breath. In April 2025, Kim attended a memorial service at a newly created Museum of Foreign Military Operations in Pyongyang, where he praised those who chose "self-blasting" and suicide attacks "to defend the great honour." The BBC's analysis of the memorial site estimated 2,300 soldiers were killed; Ukraine's intelligence directorate put the figure at 3,000 killed and 1,500 wounded.

But the soldiers did not simply vanish. According to Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate, approximately 8,500 North Korean servicemen remain on Russian territory, organized into four brigades and assigned to defend the Russian border in Kursk from Ukrainian incursions. They are no longer in active combat, but they are still there—a permanent fixture in Russia's war effort. What made this deployment worthwhile for Pyongyang was not military glory but cold economic calculation. Lim Soo-ho, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul, estimates that arms sales to Russia combined with the troop deployment have netted North Korea close to $10 billion over two and a half years. For a country with an annual GDP of roughly $30 billion, that represents approximately one-third of a year's total economic output—a windfall that has provided food, oil, and hard currency to an impoverished, heavily sanctioned state.

The arrangement has also shifted North Korea's geopolitical position in ways that extend far beyond economics. For decades, Pyongyang's survival depended almost entirely on China's support and tolerance. The deepening military cooperation with Russia has changed that calculus. In September of last year, Kim Jong Un stood alongside China's Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in their first public meeting of all three leaders—not as an equal, but no longer as a supplicant to Beijing alone. At the 9th Party Congress of the Korean Workers' Party earlier this year, Kim spoke of accomplishments that neither his grandfather Kim Il Sung nor his father Kim Jong Il had achieved. The partnership with Russia, which began as economic and military necessity, is hardening into something more durable and strategic.

For Russia, the arrangement addresses an urgent crisis. Four and a half years into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow faces a manpower shortage so severe that Western and Ukrainian intelligence agencies estimate it is losing approximately 6,000 more troops per month than it can recruit. Russia has turned to foreign fighters from Colombia, Kenya, Cameroon, and North Korea to sustain its ranks. The two countries have created what amounts to a coalition at a price: North Korea provides soldiers and weapons; Russia provides resources and military modernization. The North Korean troops who fought in Kursk learned lessons about modern drone warfare that will make them more effective in future operations. They gained real combat experience that will strengthen their military capabilities for years to come.

Yet dangers remain. To date, no North Korean forces have fought on Ukrainian soil or in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory. If they do, the diplomatic consequences could be severe, particularly in South Korea, which is an ally of Ukraine. Zelensky has been pressing Seoul to provide advanced military hardware, including air defense systems, and has warned that North Korean involvement in Ukrainian territory would represent a direct threat to every country in Asia within range of North Korean missiles. Only two North Korean soldiers have been captured alive by Ukrainian forces—a staggeringly low number given that between 11,000 and 14,000 fought in the Kursk campaign. Both men were captured by accident or deception, and both expressed that they had intended to die rather than be taken prisoner. For North Korean soldiers, becoming a prisoner of war is considered a crime, a betrayal so profound that their families face punishment. One of the captured men, using the pseudonym Baek Pyeong-gang, lay wounded from a drone strike for four days before Ukrainian soldiers tricked him into surrendering by posing as his Russian allies. The other, Lee Kang-eun, was found barely conscious on the battlefield with extensive injuries. He told journalists he felt guilty for still being alive, that he had no grenade or knife to end his life as his training demanded. Neither man wants to return to North Korea. Lee believes his family would be "wiped out" as punishment for his capture. Both have asked to be sent to South Korea, and Seoul has indicated willingness to accept them. But Ukraine, still pressing for military aid from the South, has not committed to their transfer, citing international human rights obligations that prevent forced repatriation of prisoners of war. Their fate remains suspended, a small human consequence of a much larger calculation.

What appears certain is that more North Koreans will join Russia's war. The economic and political value to Pyongyang is too great to abandon, and Russia's need is too desperate to refuse. For as long as the arrangement remains profitable for North Korea, the soldiers will keep coming.