00:00Joining me now is Jenny Town. She is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and director of
00:04its Korea program and 38 North. She joins us again from Washington. Jenny, it's good to have
00:10you back on the program. When you were with us on the 31st of July, the estimate was another
00:1630,000 North Korean troops. Now Zelensky says as many as 50,000. He has not told us how Ukraine
00:24knows this. I mean, how seriously should we take that number? I think it's really hard to assess
00:31the number itself and 50,000 seems very high considering the casualty rates we've seen before
00:38given how much attention they placed on, you know, trying to build the hero narrative knowing that
00:44this is not a popular war to advertise inside North Korea. But certainly that cooperation is there
00:53and more troops are being prepared to go. Exactly how many I think is still under debate and we'll
01:00have to see. But some reports are estimating closer to about 20,000 or closer to what we saw before
01:06in the first deployment that the North Koreans had to Russia.
01:10At what point does North Korean involvement become
01:13significant enough to change Russia's ability to sustain this war?
01:20Well, I think that moment actually passed a while ago. You know, North Korea and Russia have been
01:25partners in this war for a couple of years now, and that partnership has grown. You know, the early
01:32days of providing the ammunition to allow for Russia's defense production to ramp back up into full
01:39capacity, you know, those days are over. And instead, what you see is a lot of two-way cooperation
01:44between the two, not only for North Korea still providing some level of material support to Russia,
01:50but a lot of military cooperation, a lot of economic cooperation, a lot of political cooperation
01:56that's going back and forth. There's also been stories about Ukraine, about Russia that's providing
02:03North Korea feedback on the initial missiles that they had sent in their performance to try and improve
02:10that quality. And I think that's what we're seeing now coming back into the country is those improved
02:15quality missiles to be able to use, but for North Korea to also be able to use in their own
02:21field in
02:22the future. Ukraine says that an actual North Korean missile unit is deploying to Russia, potentially
02:28with 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers. Does that move North Korea from being Russia's weapons
02:36supplier to maybe being a party to this war, something closer to a co-belligerent?
02:43I think, you know, I think it does. I think they're still probably very cautious that the Russians are
02:49probably still very cautious to keep North Koreans in Russian territory and not to cross over.
02:54But this is part of, you know, what was, you know, established under the Comprehensive Strategic
03:00Partnership Treaty as well that the two signed in 2024. So, you know, I don't think it's surprising to see
03:07this cooperation expand, especially given how Iran was helping provide some weaponry to Russia in the past
03:15as well and can no longer do that. So it does really place a much greater importance on North Korea
03:22as a partner
03:23and as one of the very few partners that Russia does have to continue and to prolong its warfighting
03:31capabilities.
03:32President Zelensky, he says that North Korea is using Ukraine to learn modern warfare. And you have
03:39warned recently about exactly that. Drones, artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, attacks on
03:44communications, even satellite systems. Is Ukraine becoming a live fire laboratory for how North Korea
03:51might one day fight South Korea?
03:56Yeah, I think so. There's obviously a lot of lessons that they're learning. You know, they haven't had
04:01battlefield experience since 1953. So this is really an important opportunity for them to find out what
04:09they don't know and to really fill in those gaps and adapt to modern technologies, modern tactics, and
04:17especially what we see is a real emphasis on multi-domain tactics. I think we're seeing these
04:22lessons being reinforced in the war in Iran as well. And, you know, it really has a lot of implications
04:28of how differently a war in the Korean Peninsula will look in the future and raises a lot of questions
04:34of how prepared countries like South Korea are for a new type of war, especially when it comes to their
04:41own civil defense and civilian resilience. What is Russia teaching North Korea that Kim Jong-un
04:49could not realistically learn on his own? And what worries you the most about that?
04:56Well, I think really just a lot of the multi-domain capabilities and seeing it in practice, how it's
05:02used, and the ability, you know, it's not just watching the missiles and where the missiles are going,
05:08but it's really, you know, how do you integrate cyber operations, electronic warfare, GPS jamming,
05:16communications jamming, all of these kinds of things to create a more chaotic environment that's
05:22very hard to predict where that, where the center of attention is going to be, how those different
05:28elements are going to reinforce each other or create greater chaos. And the fact that right now we also
05:34don't have, you know, strong crisis communication between adversarial blocks to try and manage that
05:42kind of, you know, chaotic environment in case of a contingency on the peninsula. So I think, you know,
05:47there's a lot of really concerning developments that we're seeing here that really talk about the
05:53changing nature of warfare in general, and especially if there are multi-front conflicts going on at the
06:01same time. Jenny Towne, as always, Jenny, good to have you on the program. Good to get your valuable
06:05analysis. Thank you. Thanks.
Comments