North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea’s army training ‘revolution,’ military drills and Ukraine-DPRK trade

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un observed a series of military drills aimed at enhancing the country’s ongoing “war preparations” last week, ahead of a gathering of thousands of military officers in Pyongyang for a rare conference on instigating a “revolution” in army training.  NK News Managing Editor Bryan Betts joins the podcast to discuss […]

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 careerpro.com solutions today. day. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News Podcast. I'm your host, Jack Hoes-Wetslet and this episode is recorded here to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jack Hoes-Wetzel, and this episode is recorded here in the NK News studio

on Tuesday, the 20th of May, 2025. I'm joined in the studio by senior managing editor, Brian Betts. Brian, welcome back on the show. Good morning, Jack Ho. Great to be here. Good morning. We have three interesting themes to talk about. Let's start with the military one first.

Yeah. So Kim Jong Un made several military-related appearances last week. First one was at a special forces and tank drills. I think this took place maybe Monday or Tuesday. Two separate drills? It was one drill. Oh, special forces and tanks, literally together. Yeah, so you got some demonstrations of these sort of shirtless soldiers who were doing some taekwondo or other martial arts. These are the guys that we sometimes see

were breaking concrete blocks with their heads and bare chested and with standing blokes. Yeah, they were putting these giant blokes on their back while another soldier took a sledgehammer to it. Oh gosh, okay. It was quite dramatic. Were they also rolling tanks over the special forces? Is that how they were combining the two? No, that was separate. Oh,, okay. It was quite dramatic. Were they also rolling tanks over the Special Four? Is that how they were combining the two?

No, that was separate. Oh, I see. Yeah, that was the typical kind of tanks driving around muddy fields, going through like water obstacles. There's also some live fire component to it. Here's a question. I mean, given what we've seen in the Ukraine-Russia war, were there any drones used in this tank drill that we saw?

There was. There were some photos that showed some of the special forces, or at least some of the soldiers operating these kind of small drones, you know, similar to the kind that you might see in Ukraine. And I think the key thing here also is that this drill was attended by a bunch of KPA, Korean People's Army drill instructors, like training officers, they call them, who they were in town to attend this giant conference. And in his sort of remarks at the event, Kim Jong-un emphasized, oh, we need to modernize our training, we need to transform the entire ranks into elite units capable of executing

any order perfectly and completing war preparations and all of this seemed to be suggesting an effort to modernize training in line with what the Ukrainian troops have been learning. Yes, or the North Korean troops have been learning in Ukraine, right? And one of the things that we've all been learning is that tanks can be vulnerable to drones That's why I'm wondering were they showing how to take down drones or disable drones? Was that part of this big drill at all? So that actually came a little bit later in the week.

Ah, okay. Go on then please. Yeah, yeah. So on Wednesday and Thursday last week, they had this big conference for the training officers. Right. It looked to be several thousand of these kind of drill instructors who had gathered in Pyongyang. And this was the first time it had been held in seven years.

So it's pretty rare. Since before COVID? Yeah, since before COVID, pretty rare event. And again, it was sort of framed as we're going to kind of accelerate this move to increase the capabilities of the army and blah, blah, blah. And Kim Jong Un was saying a lot about, oh, we need to raise up future combat heroes. And this language was kind of striking

because this sort of heroes is what they've been using to promote the accomplishments of the soldiers deployed to Ukraine. So since North Korea came out end of last month and acknowledged that, hey, we did this, we had to go fight the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and all the other rhetoric they use. They've been lavishing praise

on the soldiers who fought there. And so, yeah, Kim Jong is basically saying, we're gonna take the lessons that we learned. We're going to improve our training so you guys can be the next guys, the next heroes who who go out and sacrifice for the good of the nation and the world. It's so important to North Korea, I guess,

because this is the first large-scale military engagement that the North Korean military has seen since 1953, right? So there's a lot of lessons to be learned here. Yeah, first real combat experience in a modern war. And this is a war that has also, as we've seen with, particularly with drone warfare, and introduced all these new kind of capabilities that really sort of changed the game. And the world is watching and learning lessons from that. So yeah, have you got any sort of little nuggets of what North Korea might be drawing

from this or has mentioned already in the media? So they didn't say a lot specifically about what the lessons they were learning were, but they did mention they alluded kind of vaguely to deviations in training systems, but they didn't give any clarity on what those are. But they put a lot of emphasis on, we are training for actual war. So, I mean, it sounds like, you know, the, the KPA does a lot of training that, you know, a lot of things are not directly rated to combat. They get sent to help with agriculture and building stuff.

And it seems that, you know, they're trying to make this push to let's, let's use the combat lessons that we have gathered and do stuff. That's a little bit more useful. Hello to Bob Carlin and Seek Hacker if you're listening. Yeah. Yeah. And then, so after that, we saw on state media on Saturday that Kim Jong-un attended another event.

This one was these large-scale air force drills. Oh. It'd be, I mean, they did so many different things there. They had anti-air and strike training operations. They had drones again. They did missile defense. They practiced intercepting cruise missiles. They practiced anti-drone techniques, taking out drones.

This is of course relevant because of, you know, the South Korean drones that allegedly flew over Pyongyang and other intrusions over the years. Did they also put jet fighters up in the sky? They did, yeah. And they said they tested a new anti, no, air- air to air missile. Oh wow.

That they're claiming was indigenously produced. This is interesting because not even South Korea has produced its own, domestically produced its own air to air missiles. I did not know that. So it's, you know, there are lots of question marks about this, is it really fully developed? Is it deployable? And is it, you know, if they did

develop this, did they get Russian help? Lots of questions about that, but it was interesting that that did appear in the report. And any time that North Korea puts up an Air Force display or drills, as we saw last week, you know, it raises questions about how much jet fuel have they got there, you know, because they're not supposed to have access to that sort of fuel under sanctions, under UN sanctions. And how many of their planes are serviceable, clearly enough to put up these displays? Yeah. So I think the whole point of this drill, and Kim Jong-un made this clear in his remarks,

was that he was sort of broadcasting that they're going to have a more aggressive air defense posture. Yes. And, you know, North Korea's Air Force is very weak compared to its other branches. You know, the Army's land forces are the biggest. Navy has also been quite underpowered, but they've been pushing to modernize that. And now he's sort of extending that now to the Air Force even further. You know, we've already seen it a bit with the advanced drones, the Sepul IV and IX, which are copycats of the US models. The Grim Reaper and the other one.

So now he's, you know, they did training, this recent training included on responding to like aerial intrusions. So you know, North Korea has always complained loudly whenever US does sort of reconnaissance flights near their airspace, accused the US of intrusions before. Interestingly, despite this kind of push towards modernizing the Air Force, the state media's report did not include any language about use of nuclear assets, like nuclear armament of air forces. So, I mean, part of that is probably just they might not have a warhead that's been miniaturized enough to fit on the weapons

that those capabilities are able to carry. Also, they just don't have advanced enough bombers for those bigger weapons. So they, you know, if you look at the US military, they have their kind of nuclear triad, which is like the ground-based launchers, the submarine missiles, and then you've got like the B-1B bombers, the strategic bombers. But North Korea has said, sort of broadcast, at least for now, the strategic bombers, that kind of side of things is not their focus But they are developing the submarine and obviously the many different facing operations on land-based

Launchers a buffet of missiles and land-based launchers. Yes. Yeah. Wow. Okay So lots of military things that Kim Jong-un himself was at last week He was also seen last week kneeling at the grave of someone that wasn't his father or grandfather. Yes. So this is Hyun Chul-Hae. He's a former military official and mentor to Kim Jong-un. He was apparently close friends with Kim Jong-il and he was kind of like a guard, bodyguard kind of for the family for many years, rose up to the ranks of the military, got to like to the highest rank short of the Supreme Leader himself in the military. And he died in May 2022.

This was right in the middle of COVID restrictions. And yet despite that, thousands of North Koreans came out for this kind of grand funeral procession through the streets of Pyongyang. I remember that. That wove through the city and up to the revolutionary martyrs' graveyard. And then a year after that, they had another big memorial for him where several top officials were kind of like, they were remembering his loyalty to the regime and shedding tears for him. And Kim Jong-un made his first visit to Hyun's gravesite that year and was shown kneeling before the gravesite, laying a rose, being a bit emotional. And it's quite striking.

This is not a Kim family member. And yet here is the Supreme Leader shown kneeling, probably for the first time ever. And then he did it again last year. And then now that he's done it again this year. So this is three years in a row now that he has visited the grave site shown kneeling. And this is plastered all over the front page of the road on Shin moon. And yeah, it's quite striking. And this is a, Hyun-chul Ha-ha was born in 1934, so he was close to 90 when he died, but that means that he was part of that first generation of men around Kim Il-sung. He was Kim Il-sung's personal bodyguard during the Korean War, and I think he may even have fought with him

against the Japanese before the Korean War. So he really is that first generation. I think he, I don't think he was involved in fighting the Japanese I think it was maybe during the Korean War that he got involved. I think he was a little too young. He was too young you are correct of course. I think when he was a teenager is when he first sort of came under under Kim Il-sung and got to know Kim Jong-il at that time. I sit corrected he wasn't one of the the partisan fighters but he was one of the first generation of close military folks around Kim Il-sung Right again part of that generation that's that's passing away

But really yeah, as you say it's striking to see Kim Jong-un showing You know an act of such an act of loyalty to someone who's not a direct member of the Kim family Yeah, how do we interpret that? It's it's trying to stimulate some sort of loyalty in the youth of North Korea? I think, well, for starters, I think it probably, he was probably just very close to the man. He was sort of the guy that Kim Jong-il tasked with mentoring his son to get him ready for leadership. So this began around, I think it was around 2008 or so. Yep. And so he was sort of a key person who, who backed Kim Jong-un in his, in that power transition and we know how there was some bumps in the road there for him.

Well, we saw Jang Song-taek killed. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, that may be part of it. It may just be personal affection. Okay. Um, but I think regardless of, of, of that, there's clearly a propaganda message that is being sent by showing Kim giving these sort of displays of admiration and love for this man. And, you know, there's a lot of emphasis on, in state media, on that Hyun gained eternal life through his loyalty to the regime. So it is definitely about saying,

if you show loyalty like this man, the party will reward you. You can achieve immortality through the party, through service to the state. By being remembered, yeah. Okay, lastly, very quickly, we've got a quick story, very interesting one though, an intriguing story that Anton has done recently.

Yeah, so we noticed that you can look up Ukrainian trade statistics online. And released by the government of Ukraine? Yep, and accessible via various other sites online, public stuff. And we combed through that and we saw that bilateral trade between North Korea and Ukraine has never been high and it plummeted after the pandemic began. But interestingly, it has continued on a very low level even since the start of the Ukraine War and it was shortly after Russia's invasion that Ukraine totally cut ties with North Korea. So despite that, we're still seeing some trade. It's in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. So not large amounts. Not large amounts, but we're seeing things like vehicles and parts. That's intriguing. So North Korea is apparently supposed to be exporting vehicles and parts to

Ukraine. That's what the data suggests. And there's also some electronic stuff that appears to be exporting vehicles and parts to Ukraine. That's what the data suggests. But... And there's also some electronic stuff that appears to be to fall under kind of sanctioned HS codes. So we've got some sanctioned goods going in, we've got some North Korean vehicles going in. North Korea doesn't produce consumer vehicles for export. So it all raises just a lot of questions. And so we were trying to kind of tease out what's going on here. Yeah, it's, we don't have a definite answer. But there, we

talked to some experts and we have a few theories. My first guess would be that it's mislabeling of the Republic of Korea to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. So that is Yeah, that is the first theory we explored and quite likely possibility. South Korea obviously does produce a lot of vehicles for export Yep, and electronics and electronics. Yeah. Another possibility is that there, you know the similarity between the names or abbreviations for Democratic People's Republic of Korea and Republic Republic of China What sorry Republic of China? Oh, I see or people's Republic of China. Oh, I see.

Or People's Republic of China. So China and North Korea. There was some confusion there and that may have caused a mix-up. Other theories include that, well, Ukraine's in the middle of a war right now. Maybe they've just got some bigger priorities. Resources are stretched a little thin. They'll take what they can get. They'll take what they can get or they just don't have the law enforcement capabilities

to adequately police the imports. And another thing is, you know, North Korea's got some sophisticated smuggling networks that it's built up over the years. Obviously it has close ties with Russia, and Ukraine has always been closely linked to Russia, part of the Soviet Union. So potentially they're leaning on those networks to get some stuff in leaning on context that developed among Ukrainian businesses or you know, there's some Ukraine's has its own kind of shady networks as well, I suppose.

Yeah, even in times of war, there are people trying to make a profit. Of course. Yeah, interesting. Well, what an intriguing story that we'll leave on today. Thank you very much, Brian Betts for coming on the show. All right. Well, what an intriguing story that we'll leave on today. Thank you very much, Brian Betts, for coming on the show. Thanks, Shachar. 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. Music