Seoul (dpa -AFX) – According to a study, military cooperation between Russia and North Korea has disclosed the increasingly unequal balance of power between the two countries. “While North Korea provided Russia with large amounts of weapons, ammunition and staff, Moscow’s consideration was comparatively limited and had no visible effects on the North Korean economy,” says the publication “Unequal Partnership” of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation.
In it, the author Olena Guseinova from the Hankuk University of Foreign Languages in Seoul estimates that North Korea has sent weapons worth at least $ 5.6 billion since 2023 and around 15,000 soldiers for Russian support in the Ukraine War. The study author puts the consideration at around 450 million to a maximum of $ 1.2 billion. In her analysis, Guseinova refers to official government information, secret service providers and freely available data (OSINT).
In this way, North Korea is said to have received food and military air defense systems. In contrast, noteworthy foreign trends were not flowed to North Korea, the study said.
Most recently, the first cracks had been shown in the de facto alliance between North Korea and Russia. For example, North Korean state television reported for the first time last week that high-ranking military people accused the Russian armed forces and lack of coordination at the beginning of their commitment in the Ukraine War. From this it can be derived that North Korea is responsible for Russia for the initially high losses of troops, reported the NK News. The South Korean secret service (NIS) estimates that around 2,000 North Korean soldiers have lost their lives in battles in the Ukraine War.
The NIS also assumes that North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong Un is “disappointed” by the previous compensation of Russia for the sending of soldiers. “Russia does not seem to have adequately compensated North Korea,” the South Korean daily “Dong-A Ilbo” quoted a secret service officer who had briefed the MPs on intelligence findings in a parliamentary committee.
Moscow and Pyongyang sealed in the summer of 2024 when visiting the Russian president Vladimir Putin In North Korea a strategic partnership that also includes military support, one of the two countries should be attacked ./fkr/dp/zb