North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Blaming Russian for North Korean deaths, 100 days of Lee Jae-myung and drills

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

This week, NK News Correspondent Joon Ha Park joins the podcast to discuss newly revealed DPRK state media footage that appears to blame Russia for North Korean casualties during fighting against Ukraine. He also talks about what President Lee Jae-myung said about the DPRK at a press conference to mark his first 100 days, as […]

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I'm your host, Jack O'Swetsuit, and I have a little bit of a case of the sniffles, in case you're wondering why my voice is different. And here in the NK News studio with me today is Junai, welcome back. Thank you. You know yesterday was the 75th anniversary of Operation Chromite, the Incheon landings, which turned the tide of the Korean War. Only for a while, though. Well, for long enough.

Long enough for the South Koreans and the United Nations forces to take Pyongyang. Okay, so that's a historical commemoration. I'm not sure of anyone commemorated that yesterday, if there were any ceremonies. But let's talk about some more recent news on the Korean Peninsula. And we're going to start off with some news gleaned from North Korean State Television about North Korea's operations in Kyrrhus, part of the ongoing war of Russia against Ukraine. So tell us what we've learned from state media.

Right. So North Korea, they aired some previously unseen footage and internal military reports detailing its deployment to the war in Ukraine. They were shedding light on some casualties, some operational struggles and how, and sort of the DPRK's complex relationship with Russian forces. Right. I love it when we see, you know,

know, occasionally a document on a TV screen or in the background of a photograph and a newspaper. We don't see the document itself, but we see a photograph of all or part of it, and that's the only source that we have to glean some information. And it makes you wonder, did North Korea mean to show this, or is this accidental? Right. So some of the reports that were broadcasted, so the KCTV and the Korean Central television broadcaster, it broadcasted images of military reports that were submitted to Kim Jong-un. Right, and we know that because it's got his signature across the top. Right, yeah.

And it was admitting some heavy losses among DPRK troops deployed near Kursk, the Kursk region. The commanders, they were citing coordination issues with Russian units, leading to some setbacks and serious losses among these special operations forces. And the reports do confirm that Western and Ukrainian intelligence assessments about the early struggles of the KPA, so the Korean people's army. Right, I remember talking about this at the time, that there were problems with coordination, communication, adapting to modern warfare.

Interoperability, all of those sorts of things. And this is North Korea's documents that basically confirms all that. Right, right. So, and then we saw this sort of secrecy and concealment sort of happened within the, or be documented. So Kim ordered some strict secrecy around the deployment and joint operations with Russia, which also confirms open source reports of DPRK efforts to mask its presence in the region. Yeah, including a fake military ID from an Asian ethnic minority within Russia. Right, which is something we also talked about. Yeah, so indeed.

So North Korean soldiers, they were reportedly given false identities, including Tuven names, to obscure their involvement in the war. Yeah, and this is, I mean, what do you think? Do you think North Korea deliberately showed us these documents to verify these things that the media has been alleging for the last year or so? Right, so some of the things that experts have been saying, especially when we were looking at the report that Anton wrote, is that they interpret it as, like, Pyongyang attempted to shift this sort of responsibility for early setbacks

while signaling sort of tensions with Russian command structures. So it's claiming Russia. Right, yeah. Which is no surprise, given the way that the war's been going, million casualties, et cetera. Yeah, anything else that we can learn from this? So it does reflect some operational challenges and casualties for the DPRK troops that are still adapting to this level of modern warfare that we're seeing currently unfold in Ukraine, namely the use of drones on a large massive scale. So I think it does highlight the DPRK military's hierarchy's independence from Russia and incentives to document this sort of setbacks, so to say,

accurately for this sort of internal leadership review amongst the military leadership there. Right, and we know that North Korean troops in the Kursk region have been developing their own techniques to fight off and shoot down and evade Ukrainian drones. Sure, yeah. Just as a point of information here, Have we, as yet, any confirmation that North Korean troops are fighting on Ukrainian soil, or are they still only in the Kursk region of Russia? Right.

So we've seen that there is quite a lot of footage that was released by North Korean state media. It does look like it's only from the Russian soil area sort of region. So I don't think they have actually had any incursions into Ukraine. It's interesting. I mean, it seems like from the North Korean side that Kim Jong-un is showing some cautiousness, some hesitancy to go all in and put his troops in what Russia has claimed. And Russia has carried out those illegitimate referenda there in those occupied parts to say, this is Russian territory. But it's interesting that Kim Jong-un hasn't really legitimized that claim by putting his troops on that sort. So I think, I mean, we can't really predict.

as to how North Korean troops will actually move around in the region. Sure. They are also, you know, they have military independence, but they also are working with Russia at the same time. So I think they'll move alongside the Russian forces in the region if they do go into Ukrainian soil. But, of course, it's too early to predict any movements there. Right. Yeah, it's a very good report, you know, by our colleague, Anton,

and we recommend people go and read up on that for all the latest in the news from Kursk. And now let's talk about President I Jem Yong of South Korea. He's given a recent press conference on his 100th day in office as president. And he's kind of followed up on his remarks in the speech that he gave on August 15th about the need to sort of reach out to North Korea. Right. So he did mark his first 100 days in office by stressing that sort of importance of dialogue with North Korea. So even then as Pyongyang still maintains a cold attitude,

So he did talk a lot about engagement when he was faced with a question from a local news reporter from JTBC. And what he said was, North Korea remains unresponsive. And he was calling their stance cold and said, expecting rapid change in attitudes from North Korea is quite unrealistic and foolish. So the president criticized the previous hardline approach under the former South Korean president, Yun Sogiel, and he cited sort of these, and I quote, provocative actions like drone flights over Pyongyang. These provocative actions by former President Yun-Sung-Yo. Right. So an Apache helicopter deployments near the border.

So, I Jemang was emphasizing that lowering tensions serve South Korea's interests, so security, economy, and the daily lives of citizens, and peace. And this was not to favor the North, or not due to ideology, or that he's a pro-North, Chongbuk sort of figure. Right, because that's what some of the people on the far right criticize him as, aren't they? Right, yeah. But it's only for the benefit of the South Korea. Korean public. Yeah. Now, he did, President Lee did acknowledge that things didn't go too well

with Speaker Wu Wan-Shik trying to reach out to Kim Jong-un and his entourage in Beijing recently, right? So he did express a bit of disappointment in the fact that even though, as you mentioned, the National Assembly Speaker Wu-Wan-Sik, who Kim also met with in 2018 at Panmunjom, had quite minimal engagement with Kim Jong-un. So U-Won-Sik, as I remember, he expressed that Kim Jong-un and him shook hands and only for a brief moment while Uwanshik was saying all this stuff, but Kim Jong-un was just giving him a one-word answer and then moving on. Also, lawmakers were sort of baffled by the North Korean hostility towards them as well, especially with bodyguards being quite hostile towards them.

So it does sort of emphasize and also reinforce the fact that North Korea continues to view South Korea as this hostile state, rejecting that inter-Korean unification. Would you say that President I.J. Myeong's attitude now is kind of a wait-and-see one, or is he still kind of very forward-leaning, being very active in his approach to North Korea? Well, I mean, I think it's a bit of both. So it is very much his idea of pragmatic diplomacy with the North. So he does treat this sort of stalemate as a potential prelude to a negotiation rather than just a complete dead end. So he emphasizes that strategy of strengthening South Korea's bargaining power while also remaining open to that U.S. North Korea diplomacy that we could see.

Exactly. And here you are hinting at Li J. Myeong's Trump card in his bargaining power strategy. Right, right. So peacemaker, pacemaker. Exactly. He's hoping that Donald Trump will step forward into the breach, which was all mentioned in the recent summit in Washington, D.C. and makes the matter of which hasn't happened yet since that summit. We've been far too busy, distracted, both in South Korea and in Washington, by the issue around the Georgia plant. The Georgia plants, yes, and the arrests there by ice. So let's see how that goes in the last few months of the year. And then our last story for today, we're going to finish up with North Korea.

We've been talking about its five-year military plan for a long time now, which will come up for completion by the beginning of next year. And so Kim Jong-un will, well, he's announced he's going to unveil some new plans. next year, or new policies. Right. So just to explain briefly the five-year military development plan, so it was announced in 2021 January. It is, as you mentioned, nearing its deadline. So super large nuclear warheads,

multiple warhead ICBMs, and submarine-launched ICBMs. They're expected to be completed by year's end. So North Korea currently right now has four months, I believe, four to five months, that window to showcase that progress. Probably will be at the upcoming October military parade ahead of the 9th Party Congress next year. Just a few weeks from now, basically. Right, yeah.

So just to add on to what Kim Jong-un said just last Saturday, I believe. So the announcement was made during sort of two-day visits to North Korea's Academy of Defense Sciences, armored defense weapon research institute, and also the Electronic Weapons Research Institute. So what he said, he was going to unveil a policy to advance both nuclear and conventional weapons at the 9th Party Congress expected in January, 26.

It sounds pretty ambitious, pretty comprehensive, broad and sweeping. So what we saw was that during his visits, Kim also reviewed these, what state media reported as major core technologies for tanks and armored vehicles. So these were just intelligent active protection system, the APS, and designs to counter sort of these top attack weapons coming from the ground, coming from the air to the ground towards these tanks.

So some sort of version of a North Korean version of an Iron Dome. Right, right. So it's basically just an anti-tank missile. So it's showing these APS capabilities against these anti-tank missiles for multiple angles. So state media was highlighting the North Korea's sensor and interceptor performance. And also these electronic warfare developments that we saw when he was visiting the Electronic Weapons Research Institute on the following day, I believe. So where research reportedly, it focused mostly on these advanced sensors,

jamming devices, and command and control electronics. Yep, so jamming, okay. Right. And we've seen that used a lot in the Kursk region with the drone wars between Russia and Ukraine, that both sides are trying to jam each other's drones. I'm sure North Korea is learning from that situation. Right. And that's what we see as the sort of integration of soft kill technology. So we have hard kill and a soft kill technology when we're using, when we're talking about anti-drone structures, right?

So soft kill would be basically just GPS jamming while, hard kill would be a laser, a beam that hits the drone. Right. So it does look like North Korea is developing this, reflecting some lessons that they've learned from the Kursk region and also in other regions while they're fighting at the Ukraine War. So they're using layered armor and turret protection against sort of these modern. anti-tank missiles. Ah, that's what related to the cages we saw around, some of the terrorists in Russian tanks? Okay, yeah. And I understand from the story that you've written, also that they're working on a new kind of sniper rifle.

Right, so we've seen that there was this story. I think it was, I think it was a couple months ago, actually a couple weeks ago, where we saw Kim Jong-un inspect sniper rifle shootings and sniper training. But we also saw that North Korea is sort of planning to introduce this new sniper rifle in the Ukraine war. What we've analyzed, or what our colleague Colin has analyzed, is that these rifles have not yet been deployed. But it could be a goal that comes into fruition within the coming months. Now, while we're on military things, let's also talk about the exercises happening here in South Korea. Right. So we've got Freedom Edge, the trilateral drills between the U.S.

South Korea and Japan. That's happening in international water south of Jeju Island. Ah, so it's naval. Right. Okay. So we've got naval and aerial drills. But the South Korean military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they've classed it as a multi-domain exercise. So it's going to involve, of course, all assets and all personnel from the three countries. Right. And it does come after what we saw in the multi-year Camp David training plan that we saw forged in August 2023, and this is the third iteration, I believe. So the first one came in June 24, and then November 2024, and now it's September 2025. Which is significant because it shows that it's continuing both under the new South Korean president and the new Japanese prime minister, right?

I think the interesting thing right here is that there is a bit of a caveat. So what we saw in the first and second iterations was the involvement of U.S. strategic assets, like the nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. But right now, as of today, I haven't seen any U.S. strategic or major U.S. strategic assets to come to the peninsula or be deployed to the peninsula for these particular drills. Interesting. So that's something that's something to look out for. But also at the same time, we've seen reports of the iron mace drills between the U.S. and South Korea happening at Camp Humphreys, I believe. And it's a tabletop. It's basically just a nuclear and conventional integration.

So conventional weapons from South Korea and nuclear weapons from the United States. How has North Korea responded to these latest exercises? Right. So they issued a number of statements over the weekend. So one from North Korea's sister, the powerful sister, Kim Jojong, and Park Jong-jong, the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission. I think he's second highest-ranking military official. So they were both denouncing these trilateral exercise and also the iron mace joint exercise as this sort of reckless show at force.

And they, Kim Yo-Jong, she was warning that the drills reflect a continuation of anti-DPRK confrontational policy and predicted some bad results for the allies. Park Jong-chan on the other hand, he labeled the Iron Mace Tabletop exercise as this sort of undisguised nuclear war rehearsal. And he was vowing Pyongyang with strength and its strategic capabilities in response. Okay, just to remind to our listeners that the major source of North Korea's information about the fact that these exercises even take place

is pictures and stories and footage in South Korean and Western media. They're not visible from North Korea. No, no, no. So we saw these statements being carried by the KCNA, so the Korean Central News Agency, but it wasn't included in the Rodong Shimbun that's available to the North Korean. public until I think it was Monday morning. So these statements were included in Sunday. There was also

a statement on Saturday that was sort of targeting these drills as being very reckless towards the North Korean state. But again, you know, this is just a warning and a justification for future weapons test for Pyongyang. So it's not something that is, you know, diverging from what North Korea's rhetoric has been towards these particular drills. True. So yes. Okay, well, that's what we'll end it for today. Thank you very much, Juneah, for coming on the NK News podcast.

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