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North Korea is ready for war Trump must rebuild ties with Kim's regime

A wheeler dealer (STR/AFP via Getty Images)


November 14, 2024   5 mins

When Trump returns to the White House next year, he’d be wise not to ignore one of the obsessions of his first term: North Korea. For while the Kim regime has been prodded from the news agenda over recent years, it still has the potential to cause trouble. That’s clear enough in Ukraine, where the DPRK has offered both men (about 10,000 troops) and materiel (over 15,000 containers) to Putin’s war effort.

And if the ultimate value of this support remains dubious — what North Korea is providing Russia pales in comparison to the over $175 billion worth of supplies Ukraine has received from Washington — it nonetheless speaks to the fact that the DPRK is one of the most militarised societies on earth. From an immense army, to an intensive if rickety arms industry, this is a country that can make its presence felt thousands of miles from its borders, especially once you factor in Kim Jong Un’s remarkable ability to circumvent sanctions and supply weapons to terrorists. Dovetail too the country’s long-running nuclear programme, and Trump must clearly take North Korea seriously, especially compared to the laxness of his predecessor.

In North Korean studies, one often hears of the country’s “military-first” policy or songun. This is the country’s stated policy of allocating as many state resources as possible to military development. In the event, songun is somewhat controversial, not actually appearing in writing until after nation-founder Kim Il Sung died in 1994. Yet it’s clear that the younger Kim believes his country needs to keep expanding its arsenal, both of conventional weapons and nuclear bombs. And if that explains why multiple rounds of diplomacy with the US and South Korea have failed — Kim never had any intention to denuclearise — the songun philosophy also speaks to recent domestic developments.

Right through Covid, for instance, Kim Jong Un only continued to double down on military development. Despite the rest of the world masking up and staying indoors, the country still held a lavish military parade in 2020 to mark the 75th anniversary of its Workers’ Party. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) is estimated to have over 1.3 million active personnel. Like its southern neighbour, military service is mandatory for all men, but women are also included via selective service. In theory, men must serve up to 10 years, and women eight, though the country’s richest elites are always finding ways to reduce their time through loopholes and bribes. This still makes North Korea one of the most militarised countries on earth and its people are instilled in warmaking from a very young age.

Channelling his father and grandfather, meanwhile, Kim has mobilised millions of young people to join the country’s army, even as North Korean children have “volunteered” to work in coal mines, farms, and factories. According to one defector, factory workers enjoy just one day off a week. Agricultural labourers have it even worse, getting only one day off in 10. Like most socialist countries, meanwhile, one’s own labour is framed by government propaganda as essential in furthering revolutionary state goals. While North Koreans are typically required to work eight hours a day at minimum, this can be stretched much further if issued quotas are not met. Children are also mobilised to participate in the workforce so they are instilled with a sense of loyalty toward the regime as early as possible.

Certainly, this mass conscription helps explain why the DPRK has managed to send Russia so much military equipment, even as far richer nations are struggling to meet the demand. Not that the West should look to North Korea for inspiration anytime soon. That’s clear enough ethically: UN reports have consistently shown that forced labour and abysmal working conditions are rampant across the DPRK. More than that, though, the products of these sweatshops aren’t proving very useful. Experts assert that the DPRK’s munitions being found on the battlefields of Russia are highly unreliable, unsurprising given they come from old stocks.

That’s equally true when you look at specific weapons. Debris recently recovered from a crashed projectile appears to show that Russia is employing KN-23 or KN-24 missiles sent from North Korea. The KN-23 and KN-24 share similar hardware, which can make it difficult to distinguish which is which from wreckage. But, in theory, they can strike targets from 400 to 690 kilometres away and are particularly challenging to intercept. In practice, however, Ukraine’s forces were able to shoot one of these missiles down, while experts from NAKO, a Kyiv non-governmental organisation, believe it may have been faulty to begin with.

Not that the role of the DPRK’s military equipment should necessarily be underestimated. After all, a war of attrition like the one in Eastern Europe can be prolonged indefinitely as long as both sides have enough ammunition and weapons to keep it going. North Korea is also not alone in exporting weapons to Russia: Iran and Chinese firms are providing Putin with everything from missiles to components. As any kind of peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine looks extremely unlikely for the foreseeable future, these shipments will undoubtedly continue as the war enters its third year in February.

And while North Korea’s aid may not be cutting-edge, the bigger question here is how it actually gets to Eastern Europe — especially given the mountain of foreign sanctions theoretically there to cripple the Kim regime. Things are especially given NAKO found that electronic components from the felled missile included parts from at least nine Western manufacturers, including ones based in the US and Britain. The chances of the West intentionally helping Pyongyang build weapons are obviously slim. Rather, it speaks to how deftly Kim has been able to sidestep outside sanctions.

The sanctions regime enacted by the United States and its allies has thus far been one of the most important tools for stopping North Korea’s illegal activities. But that hardly means it’s foolproof. As Mads Brügger has shown, officials in countries like Uganda are willing to look the other way if North Korean investment projects can benefit them. That’s even as shell companies can be used as fronts. Certainly, Kim Jong Un’s growing collection of luxury goods has still continued despite the pandemic. North Korea is also infamous for ship-to-ship transfers, which allow it to acquire sanctioned goods by using decommissioned and rebranded vessels flying under different flags.

No less important, North Korea is now fashioning itself as an arms exporter far beyond Russia. Sanctions monitoring organisations have long known that Pyongyang regularly deals with the likes of Syria and Iran in selling them old weapons stock, while also exchanging technical information on how to develop new missiles. Long before the war in Ukraine, North Korea has been a longtime supporter of terrorist groups like Hezbollah. While it’s unclear whether Kim Jong Un himself truly cares either way about the territorial disputes between Israel and the Palestinians, or between Moscow and Kyiv, North Korean support for the West’s enemies clearly makes sense. Having suffered terribly due to its self-imposed isolation during the pandemic, Pyongyang needs all help it can get. If this means aiding international terrorism, then so be it.

“North Korea is now fashioning itself as an arms exporter far beyond Russia.”

At the same time, this feeds into the future of North Korea-Russia relations. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Moscow can continue vetoing all new sanctions proposed against Pyongyang, even as the North Koreans themselves keep developing new weapons — and deliver them to the West’s ideological rivals. The DPRK is continuing to test and improve its ICBM technology, which is technically capable of reaching American shores. Then there’s the nuclear elephant in the room. With the West’s hopes of denuclearisation little more than a pipe dream, Kim Jong Un’s biggest priority is being recognised as a legitimate nuclear power. No wonder the country has conducted six nuclear weapons tests since 2006. South Korea’s military intelligence has long warned that Pyongyang is poised to conduct a seventh at any time, but when this will happen remains to be seen.

All this might matter less if the US were taking this threat seriously. As it is, and notwithstanding some new sanctions, the Biden administration largely treated North Korea as a side issue compared with China or the Middle East. But given Trump was the first sitting president to hold a summit with a North Korean leader, could he coax Kim Jong Un back to the negotiating table? The chances are slim, unless both leaders know that they can come away with something substantial. And given Kim is now adamant that the DPRK will never give up its nuclear weapons, it seems that future talks will only be around arms control, if they even happen at all. Though given how much of a threat North Korea poses from Lebanon to Ukraine, that’d surely be a start.


Oliver Jia is an American researcher specialising in Japan-North Korea relations based in Kyoto. He works as a freelance journalist and has been published in outlets including NK NewsThe Spectator, and The Japan Times. He regularly posts on his Substack Foreign Perspectives.
OliverJia1014

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Stephen Ford
Stephen Ford
25 days ago

Ukraine is entering its fourth year in February, not its third year

Seb Dakin
Seb Dakin
26 days ago

Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons, and look at it now.
There is not a single thing Trump could say or offer that would induce me, if I was Kim, to give up my nukes, and I imagine Kim Jong Un is considerably more hardline than I am.

Carlos Danger
Carlos Danger
26 days ago
Reply to  Seb Dakin

Good point. But Donald Trump knows that Kim Jong Un will never give up his nuclear weapons, at least in the near term. The objective with the Singapore and Hanoi summits during Donald Trump’s first term was to get Kim Jong Un to make meaningful moves towards peace in exchange for a series of staged sanctions relief. Things like sign a peace treaty to replace the current armistice. Or freezing or dismantling specific nuclear facilities, halting missile tests, or allowing international inspections. These steps, while falling short of full denuclearization, could have led to some easing of economic sanctions. They still might.
North Korea is still a worry, but not as much as it was in 2016. Then we didn’t know much about Kim Jong Un. Seoul is only 30 miles from the border with North Korea, and apart from the use of nuclear weapons there was concern that North Korea might use chemical, biological and even conventional artillery weapons too. Worry about an offensive attack seems to have died down. Kim Jong Un knows he would gain nothing from that, and would have everything to lose.

Brett H
Brett H
25 days ago

North Korea seems to have a strained relationship with China who it depends on for much of its trade and aid. I don’t quite understand how North Korea appears to operate so independently. Surely China must be a big player here.

D Walsh
D Walsh
25 days ago
Reply to  Brett H

The very last thing China wants is a United Korea allied to the US, so they have to allow the North Koreans some independence, they basically just try to ignore the crazy stuff

John Galt
John Galt
25 days ago

> if rickety arms industry, this is a country that can make its presence felt thousands of miles from its borders,

In military theory this term is called force projection, and there is broadly the category of local, regional and global. China, Russia, Iran, Israel these are countries with regional force projection capabilities they can get men and material anywhere within their region. The US is the only currently country that can globally project force, but NK is local at best.

Sure there are 10,000 troops in Ukraine now but putting 10,000 people on a train on a country bordering yours for a several hour train ride is one thing. Being able to coordinate the movement and logistics of even 100,000 troops is a monumental effort that requires an insane level of organization and communication and technology that is neigh impossible to achieve even with the best of capabilities. The idea that NK could do anything with their 1 million men army besides march them into the machine gun fire on the other side of the DMZ is laughable.

NK is the equivalent of a cactus, sure if you smack it you’ll get poked but you can just walk around it.

It is a far cry from being able to produce large numbers of rifles to producing all of the equipment needed to wage modern warfare from tanks and planes to drones and long range artillery these things require large groups of talent to produce, and I just don’t see the country that struggles to have electricity regularly building a booming automotive industry that is required to have mechanized units.

And forgive me if I don’t fear their ICBMs. Much of the anti-nuke capabilities developed were to protect against an enemy that had 1/3 of the worlds people and land under their sway along with some of the most talented scientific minds in history who had the ability to launch payloads numbering in the triple digits. I’ll put my faith that systems designed to handle that can probably handle half a dozen rockets from a country that struggles with basic food security and where independent thought is punishable by death.

D Walsh
D Walsh
25 days ago
Reply to  John Galt

Let’s hope the North Koreans (or Iran) don’t develop a growing military relationship with a country that knows how to build reliable ICBMs

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
25 days ago
Reply to  John Galt

But would any US President be wise to risk some US people and assets on it? I rather doubt it.

Tom Condray
Tom Condray
25 days ago
Reply to  John Galt

All of your points are spot on. Certainly, direct action by Kim against South Korea, or some sort of long range nuclear attack, would mean the end of Kim, most definitively.
Nevertheless, I’ve always been concerned that Kim may decide it furthers his strategy of disrupting the world to offer a nuclear weapon to one of the many insane Middle East terrorist organizations. Placed in a truck, and driven across a border into another nation before detonation would be the epitome of any terrorist’s dreams of immortality.
As long as Kim has nuclear weapons it’s essential we recognize they do not have to remain inside his borders, or under his control, to create chaos.
And, yes, I know there are ways to try to determine where nuclear material used in a detonated bomb originates. I would not put it past Kim to use the same sleight of hand NKPR uses on other trade goods to confuse that issue up front.
In other words, just like with pretty much all of Misguided Joe’s foreign policy, Trump would be wise to resume his efforts.