North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Shoigu meets Kim Jong Un, North Korean missile defenses and DPRK guns in Kursk

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Russian security chief Sergei Shoigu made a surprise visit to Pyongyang on Friday to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a trip that came as DPRK troops fight against Ukraine and the U.S. pushes peace talks to end the war. This week, NK News Data Correspondent Anton Sokolin joins the podcast to discuss […]

Explore the unofficial world of DPRK-inspired apparel at NK News Shop. Dive into a captivating collection of North Korea-themed t-shirts, hoodies and more at the NK News Shop. From the popular Daedonggang beer t-shirts to the adventurous air-cordior designs, each and the world. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jaco's Wetsuit and this episode was recorded on Monday, the 24th of March 2025 and joining me here in the NK News studio today is Anton Sokolin. Anton, welcome back. Hey, Jakub, how are you doing? I'm absolutely fine. Thank you. What should we talk about today?

So there's plenty of events, right? And I think we are going to start with the most recent one and probably the most pressing one is the visit by the secretary of Russia's security council, Secretary of Russia's Security Council, Sergey Shoigu. He visited North Korea on Friday. It was a very quick one-day trip, basically. The last time he went to North Korea, he had a different job title, didn't he? No, last time, actually, he visited in September and he was already Secretary.

Yes, but before, so we will probably discuss this in more detail, right? So let's just start with more recent stuff and then we'll go back into Shoygu's background. So basically this visit happened on Friday. He flew in in the very early morning and then he had a very full day of meetings and so many itinerary points. So he was visiting different memorials, of course, need to pay tributes to the dead Soviet soldiers. And of course, he had meetings as well. And the crucial one, the key one was obviously with

the leader himself, right? With Kim Jong-un. With Kim Jong-un, of course. And well, as usual, as it goes, this kind of press releases and reports that we get after these meetings, they are very scanned, they are very brief, and they touch on only few things, so they slip out very few details. And this time it was practically the same. It was coming out in portions, bits by bits, keeping us awake until very late at night. But at the same time, it wasn't that informative. Those bits that were useful, they included basically the conversation that he did share certain, maybe he updated Kim Jong-un on the situation in Ukraine because he has openly

said that they discussed everything that's happening in Ukraine, quote unquote. And of course, the situation probably on the Korean Peninsula because the visit came shortly after South Korea and the US concluded their freedom shield exercises. And also the visit came right after another Russian delegation visited North Korea. The delegation was led by Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko. He's very well known and he has been on the Korean Peninsula multiple times, both in the South and in the North. He's kind of like this point man

of the Russian Foreign Ministry, and he was also in charge of overseeing the ratification process of the new Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement at Russian Parliament. Okay, now, as you said, not many details have come out about the meetings yet, and that's partly because Russia and North Korea are still being very coy about the participation of North Korean forces in the war against Ukraine.

So what do we think, or what do you think, was the main purpose behind Shoigu's visit at this time? So just like you said, the visit came amid meet these concerns or like suspicions and pretty much basically it's an established fact by now that North Korean forces are there. But yes, North Korea and Russia are being very coy about it. And of course, they are still refraining from publicly admitting it. But yes, probably the performance of North Korean soldiers was probably on the table. Of course, as we are seeing right now, Russia has managed to repel the Ukrainian attack,

the incursion actually into Russia's Kursk region. And as we understand, a certain role was played by the North Korean contingent station there as well. It is, since he said the conversation did revolve around Ukraine, this topic seems to be very hard to skip. So definitely that was it. And another, well, that's a speculation, right? And we are in this zone, with this gray zone, we can't, it's a lot of uncertainties around North Korea-, Russia cooperation. And what we're seeing is that maybe the message that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president tasked Shoigu with delivering to Kim Jong-un may be involved an invitation to participate

in Russia's celebrations of the 80th anniversary of the victory day. So the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany. Right. Okay. Which was always a big, big parade. It's a big deal. And there is a parade, like you just said. So, and we know for a fact right now that the Russian defense minister is another guy. When he visited North Korea in November, he did invite military unit, North Korean military unit to participate in the parade. We don't know whether they agreed, but probably they did. And we don't know whether the leader himself is going to go. And maybe this message was about that, the formal invitation. At the same time, we are seeing that in the Russian, let's say, liberal community, the

message, the visit, the Shoigu's visit was already dubbed as well. They took on some slightly condescending tone calling Shoigu a pager boy, an SMS boy, because in the era of IT technologies, Zoom and stuff, why do you need to actually fly? It's a long flight. Yeah, to deliver a short message that please come to Moscow. So probably it's not only about that. There's many other things, but that's what I've been hearing.

The visit doesn't underscore certain personal relations, the personal relationship that Kim Jong-un and Shoigu actually build over these years. And now we're getting back to probably Choi Gu's background, because when he first came to North Korea, it was July 2023, to actually celebrate North Korea's version of their victory day. Right. And since then, basically, they kind of forged this friendship, or at least it's a personal report, some relationship. And definitely he's someone that put in trust and also Kim Jong-un trust as well. Even though he's effectively been demoted, hasn't he?

Yes. So he was the defense minister and now he's the head of the defense council. Security Council. Security Council, sorry. So when he first visited, he was defense minister and he was in charge of the defense council? Is that? Security Council. Security Council, sorry. So when he first visited, he was defense minister and he was in charge of the war, basically, right? He was leading the war.

Right. Then the Russian... The war didn't go so well. That too, but plus the Russian defense minister was surrounded by multiple corruption scandals with his deputies ending up behind bars. So the war didn't go well, the offensive didn't work out, so much embezzlement happened, apparently. And one of the measures was to, of course, like the Kremlin reacted by jailing his aides, personal aides, but because he's such a top shot, it's very hard to get rid of him from

the public. He's very prominent. So one strategy was to demote him, and they gave him this honorary position as a secretary of the Security Council. This body directly advises to the president on matters of national security. It's not a legislative body. It's not an executive body. It's a collective, it's, I don't know, it's very hard, it's a stretch, so please take this word, it's a stretch, but you kind of can vaguely compare it to the Politburo sort of stuff. And these people on the council, it's usually ministers and very close aides of Putin, they were also the ones who backed him up on the decision

to invade Ukraine in February 2022. You probably have seen those videos with Narezhkin, the head of Russian intelligence, not knowing what to say and being at a loss a little bit there. So that's that. Okay. Wow. So that's another visit by Shoigu to Pyongyang. Let's see what, what that when is the Victory Day? That's May 9th. It's coming up in a couple of months.

So we'll see whether, whether or not a unit comes, whether or not Kim Jong-un himself comes. He doesn't like to fly much. So if he goes, it would have to be by rail, wouldn't it? Yes. And that's that raises a whole lot of questions, how it's going to be done, how they're going to handle security. So we're definitely going to keep close tabs on that. Interesting. Okay. All right. What's our next story today? And the next story also from last week, probably we're going to talk about air defense stuff. So North Korea tested its new, the newest generation air defense missile. So this is a missile to shoot down an incoming missile. Yes, exactly.

Because North Korea for generations now has been struggling with developing this system and air defense was kind of like a soft spot. They have been trying to improve this situation and now we are seeing some results. It's a gradual process. So it's not like this missile came out of nowhere. There is, of course, there were previous versions. They were basing them of Soviet systems and other ones. And this particular situation is interesting because, well, Kim Jong-un was there. He personally oversaw this.

And another thing I noticed is that when you look at the pictures published by Rudolf Shinmun, the party daily, you can see they blurred out parts of the screen that was behind Kim Jong-un and you can see Transport Director launcher. So probably since they considered it sensitive information, we probably can deduce that it's also a modified version. Maybe an upgraded version of their tells that they may use before, but now it's a newer one. Now when they tested this missile defense system, did they fire a rocket into the sky

and then send this thing at it? Is that how you test it? That actually, I don't know how it's done, seriously. That is probably out of my expertise, but what I can see that it did hit a certain target, and of course, because you need to test precision, right? And one more thing, that one is quite interesting the test happened right and we're learning about this test from rodentian moon basically south korea that usually

keeps very close tabs on this situation normally the joint chiefs of staff they put out a quick message within out minutes hours exactly because they detect it right right? And usually that's part of the game. But this time it never happened. And although belatedly, the JCF, Joint Chief of Staff, they actually did say, no, no, no, we detected it. We just didn't inform you, but we detected. Well. Yeah, I think that was quite amusing. Yeah, who knows what to believe in that case, gosh.

Okay, any other details on that one before we move on? Uh, probably not, but we have another story. Okay. We'll talk about a successful, successful hitting of targets. Let's, let's call it like that. The Ukrainian military, uh, last week reported on, uh, successfully destroying three DPRK made are self propepropelled guns. They're called COXON self-propelled guns. Is it kind of like the equivalent of a howitzer? Yeah. I heard that there is distinction, there is difference. I'm not sure what exactly that is, but our nomenclature that we use and we stick at and can use

is self-propelled gun. Okay, yeah let's go with that. So we go with that. Yeah, what's cool about this gun is that it's long-range so it's capable of delivering payload while projectiles Yes at the distance of like up to 60 kilometers with Depending on the type of the projectile. Yep, and we've seen multiple reports on how these howitzers Well self-propelled guns, Koksans. Koksans were traveling across Russia to Ukraine.

Okay. And so now we know that they definitely reached the front lines. And we've seen reports about them actually being in Donbas. But this particular time, they were hit not in Donbas, but in Kursk. Which is in Russian territory. In Russian territory, according to the Ukrainian military. Okay. Well, the Ukrainian unit that spotted it released footage

with a high-mars strike at those three coxswain systems. And of course, because it's a drone footage, right, it's a bit blurry, it's a bit hard to determine. So they claim it to be a coxswain, but Actually, we are still a bit doubting whether that was the case So we we just have to rely on the Ukrainian military whether because we don't know because these coxswain systems In at least in their shape and outlook they actually appearance, right? They look very similar to a Russian s7 peon systems So you need to really have good quality footage or imagery to determine the details because basically all we have is just a shape right, yes, and

But it's interesting what the Ukrainian military unit pointed out about this strike is that if this? Artillery systems were actually operated by the North Koreans then it means that they're clearly learning learning some new tricks on the battlefield because these systems had what we call cope cages mounted on top of them and they are used to prevent drone strikes. Right, these have been used by the Russians since early on in the war in 2022, as you said, to ward off a drone attack. Exactly. And they are usually mounted on top of tanks, basically just hits. But if a projectile hits you, it doesn't hit as hard.

That's the whole point, right? And according to the video and according to the military unit, they had those cop cages. So that's a kind of modification. And if it's the case that the North Koreans are using it, or they are observing how these guns are being used in combat, then they're clearly learning these new tricks. And maybe later we will see this sort of, I don't know, do it yourself know how applied in actual North Korea. Apart from that, the North, the Ukrainians, they also spotted that, well, those three artillery systems, they positioned very closely to one another, which made them easy targets.

Plus, MAD tracks leading directly to them made them so visible, so it was very easy to target them. We're still not sure whether it was pions or real koksans, but as far as as long as Kiev claims that it was North Korean systems, we have the first kind of confirmation that these systems are not just used in Donbas, but also in Kursk. Right. Wow. Gosh.

Okay. There's a lot going on there. And of course, no sign of a ceasefire just yet. So we'll have plenty more to talk about in the next week, I assume. Right. overseas fire just yet so we'll have plenty more to talk about in the next week I assume. Right, as far as I know negotiations are about to start today between the Russian and Ukrainian and American delegations. It's slated for this week. They had preliminary talks separately with one another like so the Russian delegation met the Americans, Americans met the Ukrainians all separately on Sunday and now we are going to see another round of official talks. We'll see how it pans out.

And for us here at NK News, the interesting question is, will the presence or participation of North Korean troops even be a topic of conversation in these negotiations, right? Right. It probably, they won't disclose anything about it. Probably they will remain a refrain from antagonizing each other and trying to keep this friendly tone, amicable tone, as we've seen in multiple statements by Witkoff, very complimentary statements towards Vladimir Putin. Probably they're not gonna be spoiling the talks with bringing up North Korean troops in there. Yeah. All right. Well, let's see what happens.

Thank you very much, Anton Sokolin, for coming back on the NK News podcast. See you again soon. Thank you, Jacko. 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.

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