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Since the full-scale invasion, discussions have occasionally arisen about the so-called “Korean scenario” for Ukraine. In 2022, “Koreanization” referred to Russia's potential attempt to consolidate all occupied territories into a single quasi-state entity. In 2023, responding to Kremlin propaganda about a possible “Korean scenario” — the division of Ukraine into two parts — the Ukrainian side assured that “there will be no 38th parallel.” In 2024, the term “Korean scenario” — a situation where, after active hostilities cease, the war has no clear winner — was used as a scare tactic by Serbia's pro-Putin president, Aleksandar Vučić. More details about “Koreanization” can be found in the article “Yalta-3, Finlandization, Korean Scenario: Is Putin Really Ready to Discuss Anything Other Than Ukraine's Capitulation?” By the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, the term “Korean scenario” seemed to take on a new meaning: the growing closeness of the dictatorial regimes of Putin and Kim Jong Un and the involvement of North Korean troops in the war against Ukraine. Here is how propagandists lie about the participation of North Korean soldiers in the war against Ukraine.
The Soviet Union was one of North Korea's main allies, maintaining economic cooperation, ideological alignment, and cultural exchange, as well as providing Pyongyang with economic aid. After the collapse of the USSR, Moscow and Pyongyang did not have much in common to sustain their previous level of relations. However, when Russia began distancing itself from the West in the early 2000s, Putin resorted to the geopolitical principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Thus, ties between Russia and the DPRK began to gradually recover.
Putin visited North Korea twice: first in 2000, when the current leader's father, Kim Jong Il, was in power, and again in 2024 under the rule of Kim Jong Un. In 2000, the leaders signed the Treaty on Friendship, Good-Neighborly Relations and Cooperation. This was Putin's attempt to restore relations with North Korea and reestablish Russia's influence on the Korean Peninsula, which had weakened after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent international sanctions against Russia further propelled the rapprochement between the two anti-democratic regimes.
Military-technical cooperation and arms trade between Russia and North Korea intensified significantly after Kim Jong Un's visit to Vladivostok in 2023. By mid-2023, the first alleged shipments of North Korean weapons to Russia were noticed. In the fall of 2023, US intelligence released information that North Korea had sent more than one thousand containers of ammunition to Russia. Pyongyang supplied Russia with large-caliber ammunition, artillery shells, and short-range ballistic missiles. According to the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, North Korea has become a crucial supplier for Russia's aggression against Ukraine, although exact data on order volumes and the quantity of supplied and promised weaponry remains unknown.
A new chapter of cooperation began with Putin's visit to Pyongyang in the summer of 2024 and the signing of the North Korean–Russian Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. At that time, propagandists boasted about the growing alliance between the dictatorships, claiming that the North Korean “lend-lease” was as good as the American one. “The threat of a contingent of North Korean volunteers appearing on the front lines could cool the enthusiasm of NATO members discussing increased involvement in Ukraine,” stated a propaganda channel with 135,000 subscribers.
However, when North Korean soldiers actually arrived to the front lines to fight alongside Russian invaders, Russian propagandists reacted strangely. Some praised the “fearless berserkers” demonstrating unprecedented combat techniques, while others fervently denied their participation in the war or presence at the front lines.
North Korean “deniables”
In October 2024, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reported that the “deepening alliance” had reached a level where North Korea was not only supplying Russian troops with weapons used against Ukraine, but also providing them with manpower. Zelensky stated that North Korea had “effectively joined” the war against Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian propaganda aimed at the Ukrainian audience tried in every way to refute these facts.
For instance, in October, propagandists quoted self-proclaimed Belarusian leader Lukashenko, who called reports of North Korean involvement in the war “nonsense.” In a channel with nearly a million followers, a November post claimed that the Office of the President of Ukraine was supposedly preparing to “surrender” Russia's Kursk region, which is why they “are now pushing the narrative about North Korean soldiers even harder.” Another propaganda Telegram channel with 64,000 subscribers mocked Ukraine's claims: “It’s hard to find a Korean in a dark forest, especially when there isn't one there.”
In the fall of 2024, Russia’s North Korean “brothers-in-arms” were deployed in the Kursk region and on the Kharkiv front. Russian propaganda resources aimed at the Ukrainian audience stubbornly ignored this and continued to ridicule Ukraine's communication on the “North Korean” topic, saying that Ukraine is “pushing this case” because its military situation is dire, and it is shifting the blame onto the Koreans.
In mid-December 2024, a propaganda Telegram channel with a million followers wrote that “the media is pushing the story about North Korean soldiers, whom no one has seen in the era of UAVs and satellites. This has turned into some kind of joke. Back in October, we wrote that this was being done to extract more weapons and money from the West and to justify intensified mobilization in Ukraine.”
The real “joke” was that propaganda channels remained silent when North Korean soldiers were captured by Ukraine and videos of them surfaced. An anonymous Telegram channel claimed in the fall that “no undeniable evidence of North Korean military personnel's participation in the war has been provided, and Ukrainian soldiers in interviews with Western media admit they have not encountered DPRK troops.” But when such “undeniable evidence” did appear, the channel simply ignored it.
On January 11, 2025, Ukrainian forces captured the first two North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. “They serve as living proof of North Korea’s illegal participation in Russia’s war,” commented Seongmin Lee, director of the Human Rights Foundation's Korea Desk
“Cold-blooded psychos with no reverse gear”
In December 2024, several Russian propagandists on Telegram first acknowledged the involvement of North Korean soldiers in combat in the Kursk region. On December 12, a so-called Russian “war correspondent” with 138,000 subscribers reported that the village of Plyokhovo in the Sudzansky district was taken “exclusively by North Korean Special Forces in just two hours.” The propagandist, praising the North Koreans’ rapid advance, effectively admitted their war crimes: “They swept through like a hurricane and took no prisoners.” Later, another Russian “war correspondent” with 380,000 subscribers confirmed that “Plyokhovo, liberated on December 6 in the Kursk direction, was indeed taken by North Korean Special Forces soldiers. They stormed through two kilometers of minefields, swiftly entered the settlement, and annihilated the enemy contingent.” This propagandist also foreshadowed further North Korean war crimes: “There were no prisoners. And there won’t be any in the future.” Citing a “source working in the Kursk region,” the war correspondent called the North Korean soldiers “berserkers” with “absolute indifference to death.”
However, not all propagandists who acknowledged the deployment of DPRK troops shared the enthusiasm for the actions of the “North Korean berserkers.” A Russian channel with over a million subscribers reported that the assault on Plyokhovo lasted more than a day, and DPRK troops were only sent in on the final day. In this version of events, propagandists claim that the “Russian army let the North Korean soldiers defeat the already weakened Ukrainian Armed Forces contingent.”
The same channel commented on other propagandists' denial of the presence of DPRK troops at the front. According to the authors, the topic of North Korean military participation in battles is “formally closed.” “Closed — because it needs to be. Formally — because the handling of information about our friendly country under the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with the DPRK, which includes mutual defense, appears rather strange,” the propagandists wrote.
As footage from Ukrainian drones capturing soldiers identifiable as North Korean began to emerge, it became increasingly difficult for propagandists to hide or downplay the extent of DPRK soldiers' involvement in combat. Likewise, it became harder to praise their combat skills. In the published drone footage, North Koreans appear to be encountering combat drones for the first time and seem unsure of how to react. A Russian military Telegram channel with over 600,000 subscribers commented on the footage: “DPRK soldiers caught on a Ukrainian drone… Of course, these fighters could be attributed to any of Russia’s Asian ethnic groups, but their facial features are distinctly Korean. Besides, their unfrightened reaction to drones in other footage says a lot.” The same channel posted a video from a hospital in Russia’s Kursk region, allegedly showing wounded North Koreans. “For now, our new allies clearly struggle to grasp the realities of modern warfare,” the author remarked.
Alleged North Korean soldiers in a Russian hospital in the Kursk region. Source: Propaganda Telegram channel
In addition to their lack of knowledge on countering attack drones, Russians also noted general issues with the training of North Korean soldiers. “There were cases where they simply stopped halfway through the field as a group to rest — and got hit,” reported a small Telegram channel with 3,000 subscribers.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) also noted that, unlike Russian troops who attack in small infantry groups, DPRK forces deploy large assault groups, likely leading to high casualty rates among them.
However, for some Russian propagandists, the North Koreans’ willingness to die en masse is seen as an advantage. ““As for the Koreans, I can say that they are the toughest psychos with no reverse gear. They’ll walk into mines, bullets, anywhere — just like it’s 1941,” wrote a channel with 260,000 subscribers.
After Ukrainian forces captured North Korean soldiers, even key Russian propagandists from federal television had to react — though in their own way. Propagandist Olga Skabeeva, in her Telegram channel, was outraged by reports of DPRK involvement in the war and interpreted the capture of North Korean troops as “kidnapping.” “Ukrainian forces invaded Russian territory, are fighting in the Kursk region, found Koreans there (if true), and kidnapped them, now they scream: ‘The DPRK is at war with Ukraine.’ Idiots. What is Ukraine doing in the Kursk region? And why is it kidnapping people?” Skabeeva asked rhetorically.
Our monitoring shows that propagandists tailor their messages to different audiences. The average Russian is being reassured that Russia is not alone in this war, that Moscow has loyal allies, and that Pyongyang is sending troops just as NATO countries allegedly deploy forces in Ukraine. The average Ukrainian is told there are no Koreans on the front line because the “special military operation” is merely a civil war that escalated slightly beyond the scale of pre-2022. Similarly, Russian agitprop attempts to “sell” this narrative to Western audiences — for example, in propaganda outlets like RT or Sputnik, North Korea is only mentioned in the context of hypersonic missile tests and tourism development, with no word about its involvement in aggression against Ukraine.
The political regime under Kim Jong Un in the DPRK is an example of industrial totalitarianism. Before 2022, Putin’s authoritarianism was described as “competitive,” “multiparty,” or “neo-authoritarianism.” After the full-scale invasion, his personalized dictatorship has been characterized as “hybrid totalitarianism” or “fascist totalitarianism.” The longer the alliance between Kim Jong Un and Putin lasts, the more dangerous the anti-Western coalition becomes. According to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Russia is helping North Korea circumvent sanctions, sharing certain technologies for tactical nuclear weapons and submarine-launched missile systems. Cooperation in improving North Korea’s missile program with Russian technology “could destabilize the Korean Peninsula and even threaten the United States,” Rutte warned.
Information camouflage is one of the signs of deepening ties between these two regimes. Ukraine is conducting proactive, multi-level communication about the DPRK’s involvement and sharing information with Western partners to better counter the dictatorial duo of Putin and Kim Jong Un. Since the war against Ukraine is an attack by autocracies on democracy, its resolution requires a global coordinated response.
Translated by Mary K
