North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea confirms Russia troop deployment, and the DPRK’s new warship

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

North Korea confirmed for the first time this week that it deployed troops to support Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine, two days after Moscow’s military chief openly acknowledged Pyongyang’s involvement. Korea Risk Group Executive Director Jeongmin Kim joins the podcast to discuss the reasoning behind the shift in the two countries’ official positions, as well […]

In the intricate world of Korean affairs, tailored intelligence makes all the difference. Korea Risk Group's consulting services offer specialized, actionable intelligence designed to guide your career-related decisions. We provide bespoke consulting services that cater to your unique challenges and goals. From policy analysis to market entry strategies, we bring clarity to complexity. Transform uncertainty into opportunity and visit career the NK News Podcast. I'm your host, Jacoes Wetzel and today I'm here in the studio with the brand newly minted executive director of Career Risk Group.

It's Jongmin Kim. Jongmin, welcome. Thanks for having me. And congratulations on your new position. Thanks very much. Boss. Thank you. Yes.

So let's start with the really big news of the week, something that we've been talking about for months and months and months. Finally, Russia and North Korea have acknowledged that North Korean soldiers in an organized way are helping Russia in its war against Ukraine. Right. Russia did it first. It was also very official with the military chief mentioning that, confirming that they are using North Korean soldiers in its war against Ukraine. And this is interesting because we have been monitoring this for over a year, I think. And then there was no really official confirmation in state media on either side. And even when they in the Russian side, of course, there's no press conference in North Korea.

When the Russian side is pushed, they would always use this diplomatic way of saying, oh, this is our sovereignty issue, or you know, we have a mutual defense treaty, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, this is the first time after Russia confirmed it, North Korea also followed through to actually confirm it as well, saying that they're confirming that they have this heroic troop deployment to Russia, and they praise the North Korean-Russia alliance. Now, I know that in the interviews with those two North Korean soldiers who were captured by the Ukrainians months ago, they said that they thought they were there fighting against South Koreans.

That's what they'd be told. I wonder now that it's sort of out in the air, out in the open, it's public. I wonder if North Korea will change its messaging to its own soldiers now. It seems like that is something that Seoul is keeping the closest eye on, right? The rhetoric towards the domestic public. Because when Kim Jong-un decided to send the soldiers to Ukraine, it's a massive risk internally. Because first of all, you have to justify it ideologically, that you're fighting in a foreign land with a foreign uniform for someone else. And with weapons that really are supposed to be theoretically for the defense of North Korean territory. Right and also they are fighting against the something that they have never done before drones as well and they have to explain it to their families and so

people were wondering like if they ever do, how would they justify in their language and ideology? It does look like, like you mentioned, it was an organized way with Rodong Sinmunakshi carrying it. So that's a big deal. And so quickly after the Russian statement, too, right? Within 24 hours. Yes.

So it seems to be almost a coordinated thing. Right. So coordination shows that they are also keeping a very close eye on the potential risks that might emanate from this But it does not look like they are going into any potential languages related to the casualties No, it brings up the big question. Why why now why now suddenly? Both sides make it public It's really difficult to to read so far based on what they have said, but there are like two widely different possibilities.

One would be confidence that North Korea would be able to control the grand narrative in North Korea after people slowly starting to hear about it and looking at how North Korean state ideology about the mutual defense treaty being so important You know confidence in the ideology and consolidation But the other side of it could be that North Korea might be considering actually pulling out soon or scaling back So that they can actually mention this now and try to control the narrative before it actually goes to the public Now we don't have any evidence of why this announcement was held off for so long. But what does your intuition tell you?

Do you think that it was North Korea that didn't want this to go public or Russia that didn't want it to go public? My guess is North Korea would have had more reservations when it comes to making this public to its domestic citizens. Because it's hard to explain. Right. Mutual defense treaty being important, it's easier to explain. But sending their own men to the territory, to the war where North Korea has nothing to direct to actually gain from. That's actually very difficult to explain to the families and also considering how North

and South Korea are very, you know, sons are important to their mothers. And you explained this to their mothers how they had to die for someone else. That would have been something very, very difficult even under like Juche sort of ideology. Right, yeah. And even in North Korea, families are smaller than they used to be. So they don't have three, four or five sons anymore. They may have one, they may have two. Exactly. And from Russian side, I guess there could have been reservations for different reasons, I guess, because they kept wanting to create the state narrative that this is a justified

war. Right. And having someone fight for you from a country like North Korea is actually not a great option. No. Okay. Well, that is anyway, that's a big announcement to start off with. Let's go to a little bit of domestic politics here in South Korea, but relevant to North

Korea. Yeah. Well, it's a campaign season officially starts. Campaign season in South Korea, it's very strict. Actually, the election law is very strict. Actually, the election was very strict. So it won't happen until like mid-May. But right now, what's happening, we have seen in the past week or so is Democratic Party decided who will run for the presidential election.

Like we didn't know who was going to run. There are no surprises there. It's Lee Jae-myeong. Yeah, it's 89 percent. That's amazing. That's historical landslide victory in a primary compared to any other candidates before Okay, but to be fair, I didn't even know who the other candidates were and and even when I looked at their names I'm like who are these people again? A few Kims

I mean a few Kims, Gyeonggi governor Kim Dong-hyun who was came in second and Kim Kyung-soo the former South Gyeongsang governor and Someone who was considered like a rightful son to Moon sort of figure in the past before he went into prison for election law violation. Anyways, Lee won the primary and PPP is still trying to figure out who's gonna run and we'll figure out by May 3rd when they do the party convention or actually it could be today on Tuesday. And with Lee Jae-myeong when it comes to North Korea. Yes. In the past few months, visiting DC as well, I got a lot of questions from people who monitor South Korea,

what Lee Jae-myeong's North Korea direction might be. Right, because there used to be a lot of engagement when he was the governor of Gyeonggi province. He was trying to do direct province to province relations there under Moon Jae-in. He sent a lot of money to North Korea. Is that allegedly or is that proven? Allegedly.

Allegedly. Allegedly orchestrated someone sending money to North Korea for multiple purposes such as him potentially visiting North Korea. And I think the amount that was mentioned was like 7 million US dollars. 8 million. Oh, God. Well, okay. Quite a bit of money. Maybe currency difference now. Right, that's true, yeah. So he's been pro-engagement a lot, he's talked a lot about it,

but now on this and on some other issues, he seems to be the kind of amnesia candidate that he's... That's a perfect way to put it actually. And selective amnesia. Selective amnesia. Oh, did I say that well? You know, hmm, maybe not now. Yeah, he just pretends He never said that before so to run through it just very quickly, please so I baseline his 2017 speeches to the 2025 ones just the 2017 was when he was running against then primary candidate Moon Jae-in He lost to that but it was the first time that he was running for a presidential race, but he sort of put himself as a figure who will be the most progressive of all. Right.

And he went for ideas in his kickoff speech in issues such as not just anti chebo and all those stuff, but also opcon transfer as soon as possible at Jusomiya, getting rid of Jusomia, the intelligence sharing pact with Japan and also removing fat. And also he sort of positioned himself as someone who will inherit the Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun era, sunshine policy, pro engagement with North Korea to bring peace to the peninsula.

And then fast forward to 2021 when he was running against Yoon, where he lost with a super thin margin. Then like the ideology side sort of went down a little bit, but then he still mentioned North Korea from the DP party charter as one of the first sentences that in his kickoff speech saying that, you know, bringing a peaceful peninsula is one of the top priority goals for the party. Right.

But now, none of that. None of that. No, he's... What's the phrase he's using? Aggressive, conservative? Right, he's using something like that, that is sort of like a legacy language from the past. I'm going to call it aggressive amnesiac. Yeah, yeah. Something like that. And then he also calls like conservatives, like very corrupt as well, which is a language he used in the past too.

But also with the... So there were multiple speeches. There was kickoff speech. There was a video that showed policy and also there was an So there were multiple speeches. There was kickoff speech, there was a video that showed policy, and also there was an acceptance speech over the weekend after he was selected as a candidate. In the kickoff speech, no North Korea mentioned at all. And only one mention of Trump as a geopolitical context rather than any policy views. And in other interviews, he would occasionally say that, you know, peace with North Korea is important.

And because of Yun's policies being too aggressive, we are led to this situation where peace is, you know, not stable. And also, you know, U.S. alliance is important. He kept saying that, like no mention of op-kontransfer or thought or anything. And now he is also saying peace is important, but we have to sort of coordinate with the US to achieve all of this. Yeah, and it's more of a peaceful coexistence line now that North and South Korea will live separate lives, but peaceably next to each other, rather than let's do economic cooperation and collaboration and cross-border projects and things like that, and with a view to ultimately

reunifying. Right, so that was the philosophy that Moon Jae-in, the former president, held when he delivered that big deliberation speech, remember, to prepare for 2045 unification. Lee isn't even going near that very deep philosophical sort of thought process. He is just very generically mentioning

whenever he is just pushed to answer North Korea questions. Well, I think it's a little bit in line with Im Jong-seok's speech last year, He is just very generically mentioning whenever he is just pushed to answer North Korea questions. Well, I think it's a little bit in line with Im Jong-Sok's speech last year, the former National Security Advisor to Moon Jae-in, that he kind of said, let's leave it till the next generation. Let's not even talk about unification right now. Im Jong-Sok actually said that unification, we have to also agree with North Korea that it's impossible.

But other DP people actually pushed back against him at the time. And Lee is not touching on the subject at all. So that's very interesting. That certainly is. Okay. Let's talk about US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He has made a public statement about North Korea. Once again, we've had a few of these in the last few months there in which it seems to be almost very close to crossing the line of calling North Korea a nuclear state. Right, but it appears that according to Andrei Lankov, Hello Andrei, are you listening?

Hello Andrei. He was actually recalibrating the language a little bit, Rubio. So, so far we have heard from multiple US officials, including Trump himself, calling North Korea a nuclear power. But what Rubio said was North Korea is a nuclear armed country. And Andrei's point is that this is actually very different language compared to nuclear power

because nuclear power is a status in an international order and being accepted as a nuclear power. But nuclear armed means that they have nuclear weapons and admitting descriptively that they do have it in fact, but not saying that it's justified or not. I wonder if that's similar to language that's used to talk about India and Pakistan, for example. Yeah, I think back in the days, this language was also very important.

People used to keep a very close eye on these details, right? Yeah. Okay. So of course, we still do not yet have any timeline on the horizon of talks between North Korea and America. But if that war in Ukraine ends with some sort of stalemate or ceasefire soon, things may change. Right. Although there are other hot spots in the world right now, not just the peninsula. The peninsula is actually quite stable for different reasons. Sort of like a calm before the storm, sort of quiet in South Korea. Actually it was so amazing how people moved on so quickly from the Constitutional Court removal of the union. It feels like months ago now.

People completely forgot about how it was this month actually. Enjoying the peace in the downtown Seoul area. Yeah. Lastly, quick story on North Korea launching its own 5,000 ton destroyer. So this is the first of its largest new worship class. It was on Friday, I believe on the West Coast. And this was something Collins-Werko, our senior analytic correspondent, has been keeping a very, very close eye on and one of the events

Recently he predicted I asked him to make a bold prediction about the military development in the coming years because you know North Korea's five-year plan is expiring soon, right? Yes, and he actually linked to past instances of North Korea arguing that US warplanes shouldn't come nearby and they will shoot it down if they do in the future, right? They never did that. But what Colin was saying that if North Korea continues their focus on the warships, they could potentially make these into anti-air sort of capabilities and making them capable

of launching missiles from them and actually use it for recon, you know anti-recon sort of purposes. So this is in line with those developments and North Korea actually has been putting a very a lot of effort into building these warships. Yeah and this new one it's uh what's the biggest one that North Korea has they apparently built it in 400 days at the port of Nampo just over a year and it's more or less equivalent in the size or class to the the US Navy's Ali Burke class of guided missile destroyers. I have no idea what that means but it means it's freaking big. It is. And that coupled with the super big submarine that they put in the water just recently shows that North Korea really has and it's even stated this it has

aims to have a what they call they call it, a blue ocean navy to operate well beyond the peninsula region. So that's the goal it seems, and Kim Jong also claims that it will carry anti-aircraft missile capabilities and anti-ship, anti-summering, anti-ballistic, anti-anything basically. Yeah, right. Wow, okay. So that's a lot of things happening here on the Korean Peninsula. Yes. Thank you for coming today, Jongmin, and walking us through those stories.

Thanks for having me. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast evolving political business and cultural landscape? Join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis, expertly curated by top tier professionals. And now you can pick the membership level that best suits your needs, thanks to our new subscription packages. Starting at just $199 annually,

you can access daily analysis and our weekly podcast. Or try our premium membership package, which offers additional perks such as executive briefings, monthly reports and forecasts, networking receptions and event opportunities, as well as much, much more. To find the best fit for you, just head to signup.careerpro.org and become a member today. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer genius, Gabby Magnuson, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions and fixes the audio levels.

Thank you and listen again next time.