Why Russia’s use of North Korean weapons in Ukraine is a concern

On January 2, Ukrainian weapons inspector Khrystyna Kimachuk received news that an unusual-looking missile had hit a building in the city of Kharkiv. She began calling her contacts in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, desperate to get her hands on the artifact.

Within a week, the wreckage was scattered right in front of him in a safe location in the capital Kiev.

She began by disassembling and photographing each piece, including the screws and computer chips, which were smaller than her fingernails. She realized almost immediately that it was not a Russian missile, but the challenge she had was to prove it.

Amid the confusion of wires and pieces of metal, Kimachuk spotted a small letter of the Korean alphabet. And then, she came across a more revealing detail.

The number 112 was stamped on parts of the projectile. 112 corresponds to the year 2023 in the North Korean calendar. She realized that she was facing the first concrete evidence that North Korean weapons were being used to attack her country.

“We heard that they had sent some weapons to Russia, but I was able to see, touch and investigate (the missile) in a way that no one had been able to do before. It was very exciting,” she told me by phone from Kiev.

Since then, the Ukrainian military has claimed that dozens of North Korean missiles were fired by Russia into its territory. They killed at least 24 people and injured more than 70.

Despite all the recent debate over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s alleged preparedness to start a nuclear war, the most immediate threat now is North Korea’s ability to foment existing wars — and fuel global instability.

Kimachuk works for Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an organization that recovers weapons used in war, to discover how they were manufactured. But it was only after she finished photographing the missile wreckage, and her team analyzed its hundreds of components, that the most stunning revelation came.

The missile was packed with cutting-edge foreign technology. Most electronic parts had been manufactured in the US and Europe in recent years.

There was even an American computer chip manufactured as recently as March 2023. This meant that North Korea had illicitly obtained vital weapons components, secretly brought these components into the country, assembled the missile and sent it, also secretly, to Russia , where it was then transported to the front lines and fired — all in a matter of months.

“This was the biggest surprise: despite being under severe sanctions for almost two decades, North Korea still manages to get its hands on everything it needs to make its weapons, and with extraordinary speed,” says Damien Spleeters, vice-president. director of CAR.

Joseph Byrne, a North Korea expert at the London-based think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), was equally shocked.

“I never thought I would see North Korean ballistic missiles used to kill people on European soil,” he says.

Using satellite images, they were able to observe four Russian cargo ships making round trips between North Korea and a Russian military port, loaded with hundreds of containers.

In total, Rusi estimates that 7,000 containers were sent, with more than a million rounds of ammunition and ‘grad’ rockets — the type that can be fired from trucks. Their survey is backed by information from the US, UK and South Korea, although Russia and North Korea have denied the transaction.

“These projectiles and rockets are some of the most sought-after items in the world today, and they are allowing Russia to continue attacking Ukrainian cities at a time when the US and Europe are hesitant about what weapons to contribute,” notes Byrne.

But it is the arrival of ballistic missiles on the battlefield that most concerns Byrne and his colleagues, given what they reveal about North Korea’s weapons program.

Since the 1980s, North Korea has sold its weapons abroad, mainly to countries in North Africa and the Middle East, including Libya, Syria and Iran.

Armaments tend to be old, Soviet-style missiles with a bad reputation. There is evidence that Hamas fighters likely used some of Pyongyang’s old grenade launchers in their Oct. 7 attack last year.

But the missile fired on January 2, which Kimachuk dismantled, was apparently Pyongyang’s most sophisticated short-range missile — the Hwasong 11 — capable of traveling up to 700 km.

Although the Ukrainians have downplayed its accuracy, Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on North Korean weapons and nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, says it doesn’t appear to be much worse than Russian missiles.

The advantage of these missiles is that they are extremely cheap, explains Lewis. This means you can buy more and fire more, hoping to overwhelm air defenses, which is exactly what the Russians appear to be doing.

This raises the question: how many of these missiles are the North Koreans capable of producing.

The South Korean government recently noted that North Korea had sent 6,700 containers of munitions to Russia — and claimed that Pyongyang’s weapons factories were running at full capacity. Lewis, who has been studying these factories using satellites, estimates they could produce a few hundred a year.

Still recovering from the shock of the discovery, Spleeters and his team are now trying to figure out how this is possible, given that companies are banned from selling parts to North Korea.

Many of the computer chips that are integral to modern weapons, which guide them through the air to their intended targets, are the same chips used in our phones, washing machines and cars, explains Spleeters.

They are sold all over the world in surprising quantities. Manufacturers sell by the billions to distributors, who sell by the millions, which means they often have no idea where their products end up.

Still, Byrne was frustrated to learn how many of the missile’s components had come from the West. This proved that North Korea’s supply networks were more robust and effective than he, who investigates these networks, had realized.

In their experience, North Koreans based abroad have set up shell companies in Hong Kong or other Central Asian countries to buy the items using mostly stolen money.

They then ship the products to North Korea, usually across the border with China. If a shell company is discovered and is sanctioned, another will quickly emerge in its place.

Sanctions have long been considered an imperfect tool to combat these networks, but for there to be any hope of working, they need to be regularly updated and enforced. Both Russia and China have refused to impose new sanctions on North Korea since 2017.

By purchasing Pyongyang’s weapons, Moscow is now violating the same sanctions it once approved as a member of the UN Security Council. And earlier this year, the country effectively dissolved with its veto a UN panel that monitored sanctions violations, presumably to avoid scrutiny.

“We are witnessing the real-time unraveling of UN sanctions against North Korea, which gives Pyongyang a lot of breathing room,” says Byrne.

“The real winners here are the North Koreans,” says Byrne.

“They helped the Russians in a significant way, and that gives them a ton of bargaining power.”

In March, Rusi recorded large quantities of oil being shipped from Russia to North Korea, while wagons filled with what is believed to be rice and flour were spotted crossing the countries’ land border. This deal, estimated to cost hundreds of millions of pounds, will boost not only Pyongyang’s economy but also its armed forces.

Russia could also provide North Korea with raw materials to continue manufacturing its missiles, or even military equipment such as fighter jets — and, at a more extreme level, technical assistance to perfect its nuclear weapons.

Additionally, North Korea is getting the opportunity to test its newest missiles in a real war scenario for the first time. With this valuable data, it will be possible to improve them.

Even more worrying is that the war is offering North Korea a showcase for the rest of the world.

Now that Pyongyang is mass-producing these weapons, it will want to sell them to more countries — and if the missiles are good enough for Russia, they will be good enough for others, Lewis says, especially since the Russians are setting an example. that it is okay to violate sanctions.

He predicts that from now on, North Korea will become a major supplier of missiles to countries in the China-Russia-Iran bloc. In the wake of Iran’s attack on Israel last month, the US said it was “incredibly concerned” that North Korea may be working with Iran on its nuclear and ballistic weapons programs.

“I see a lot of pessimistic faces when we talk about this problem,” says Spleeters.

“But the good news is that now that we know how dependent they are on foreign technology, we can do something about it.”

Spleeters is optimistic that by working with manufacturers, they will be able to disrupt North Korea’s supply chains. His team has already managed to identify and put an end to an illicit network, before the network is able to complete a major sale.

But Lewis is not convinced.

“We can make it more difficult, more inconvenient, maybe increase the cost, but none of that will stop North Korea from making these weapons,” he says, adding that the West had ultimately failed in its attempt to contain North Korea.

Now, its missiles are not only a source of prestige and political power, but also a source of vast amounts of money, explains Lewis. Why would Kim Jong Un give them up now?