North Korea News Podcast by NK News - How Seoul and Kyiv can join forces to counter North Korea-Russia military ties

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

This week, a former Ukrainian lawmaker and a Ukrainian military official join the podcast to discuss North Korea’s support of Russian forces, and why this poses a threat to South Korea’s security. Dr. Hanna Hopko, co-founder of the International Center of Ukrainian Victory, and Ukrainian National Guard Lt. Volodymyr Vernygora examine the evolving DPRK-Russia military […]

You're listening to an exclusive episode of the NK News podcast, available only to subscribers. You can listen to this and other episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NKNews website at nknews.org slash private-feed. Hello, listeners, and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jacko Zwezzit, and today we are recording this episode on Wednesday, the 12th of November 2025, and I'm joined by two special guests from Ukraine. we have Hanna Hopko, who is a former Ukrainian MP who chaired Ukraine's parliamentary foreign affairs committee from 2014 to 2019. Today, she leads the A&S National Interest Advocacy Network and has also co-founded the International Center for Ukrainian Victory, active in foreign policy advocacy since 2022.

Welcome, Hannah. Thank you for inviting us. And we have Vlodymyr or Vlad Vernigora. Have I pronounced that correctly? Absolutely. is a Ukrainian-born political scientist and EU-Asia analyst affiliated over the years with Tallinn University of Technology, the Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies and the University of Lapland. Welcome, Vlad. Thank you so much for inviting.

My pleasure. Okay, so let's start with a bit of local politics, South Korea. South Korea, as you know, has been reluctant to provide lethal military aid to Ukraine, fearing that it could prompt Russia to help North Korea take military action on the Korean Peninsula. If you both had five minutes with President I.J. Miong. in a closed room, what piece or pieces of evidence would you use to convince South Korea to take more action to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia's war of aggression? What would you ask him to do in the next three months and what evidence would you use to persuade him? So ladies first.

Okay. So I think it would be really important that your president starts communication with Ukrainian president because it's crucially important to intensify our cooperation through bilateral talks at presidential level. And of course, we are thankful to the people of Republic of Korea for supporting and standing with Ukraine. And since the war in Europe, it's not just Russian aggression against Ukraine. So it's important for South Korea to receive their unique experience, expertise at Ukrainian armed forces the battle tested army obtain now because the war became a global laboratory for modern technologies, modern warfare. And I'm sure that if you're potential enemies

ahead of you in some tactics, operational tactics, so actually it's in your national interest to be prepared for potential tensions and obtain this knowledge. So this is first, also defense industry, the global competition between different companies. Now, among the winners, those who are producing weapons which already tested in the battlefield. So I think if you have an ambition to become and consider Europe as this potential market, so you have to use this momentum of helping Ukraine by helping your industries to grow, to ramp up on that production and innovate. because the drone production cycle in Ukraine, it's two, three months.

So this is what is battlefield requires, the competition between different players. And also, I think what is important is future investment in reconstruction. I think also your companies stick to this. This is pragmatic, but I think it's also moral issues, even if we are living in the time of a very cynical, transactional approach, but I think Ukrainians fight for humanity. It's a spiritual battle for dignity, for human rights. And I think it's in the interest of also South Korea.

Because you never know what could happen in the future that international rules-based order with justice, with accountability, prevail. Thank you. Vlad, do you have anything to add to that? Well, I think if I ever meet the president of the Republic of Korea, I would tell that the Korean nation, has a fantastic image in Ukraine, but unfortunately it is not linked to the same level of visibility. So if there is a necessity that the Republic of Korea considers as such,

or at any point in history if Korea would like to be more visible in Ukraine, they are very much welcome. There are many platforms to do that. It can be socio-cultural, it can be pure politics, can be even military cooperation, any interactions in the field of research and development, exchanges. Korea is very much welcomed as a friend in Ukraine. Okay. Hannah, you've previously claimed that North Korea, the DPRK, has provided more weapons to Russia

than all the Western partners combined have provided to the Ukraine. Is that really true or is that hyperbole? So I mean, about munition. So on munition data, so they provided more and also I think it's important to mention

that North Korean ballistic missiles and also like KN 23, 24 so it's important that they are tested already in the battlefield and improved their accuracy from one three meters to 50 one three kilometers to 50 100 meters so can you imagine that they advanced and actually upgrade their guidance system navigation and everything so in this regard I also

could ask your defense people why you are not using your anti-air defense system and other missiles to test them during the Russian aggression against Ukraine. And what we heard that the new government and president, there are some part of political elites. They believe that they could somehow reopen contacts, talks with North Korea and ask Russia to help. Sorry, how you could ask Russia, which is committing a genocidal war against Ukraine, which obtain a, technologies, dual-use trade and microchips from China and other. And then North Korea received all the technologies,

including, I mean, drones like Geran and others. And can you imagine the situation when 700 drones are flying against your country from your neighbor, 700 simultaneously with cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, And I think this is what we are facing daily because Russia is terrorizing Ukrainians by massive cruise ballistic missile attacks daily, attacking civilian, critical energy infrastructure. So I think this is, you never had this experience, but North Korean troops presented in the war against Ukraine, also soldiers, engineers. So they are learning from the real battlefield. Tell me, is your army and where your army are being trained of modern warfare? How do South Korean leaders, political leaders react when you tell them this?

So I think some of the reaction reminded me Europeans who were in denying position saying, no, no, no, this is war against Ukraine. This is not war in Europe. But when drones, Russian first missiles were in their airspace, then drones in Poland, in Sweden, in Denmark, in Lithuania. So then they were like really like, there were different reactions. Let's be frank. But they still don't perceive drones as the act of attack and potential war like assign. of the war which is upcoming, because they have this association with the World War Second, which was about tanks, fighter jets, artillery, but the modern warfare has dramatically changed.

The battlefield is fully transparent. It's the war of drones, electronic warfare, where unmanned robotic system are evacuating wounded soldiers. So in this regard, I think that You have to work with the perception of your society, explaining what we have to go through in Ukraine. Now, our local communities became a part of air defense system shutting down Shahidz. Let me turn to Vlad. Vlad, we know that Ukrainian soldiers first encountered large groups

of North Korean soldiers on the battlefield of Kursk during Ukraine's incursion into Russia last year. Have you seen any evidence that North Korean military has entered Ukrainian sovereign territory? From my side, because I am in the active military service at the moment, I can only communicate what we can find in the open sources. I would convert this question into a different kind of answer. I would approach that from that angle that any involvement of North Korean soldiers in the Russo-Ukrainian war,

any next day becomes incredibly and increasingly beneficial for them in regards of learning perspectives. So basically this is the situation when their involvement is or can be considered. It's almost like a workshop for them that with very high degree, of learning new applied techniques on literally anything, on interoperability, on an action in four different seasons, different terrains, on any tactical changes are getting noted by North Korean soldiers wherever they are does not matter. So the fact that they are learning is undeniable

and this is basically this is the knowledge that they will keep and they will build on that unfortunately for unfortunately of course for the security

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