The weapons of North Korea are killing Ukrainians. The ramifications are far more extensive

The weapons of North Korea are killing Ukrainians. The ramifications are far more extensive

Krystyna Kimachuk, a young weapons inspector from Ukraine, learned on January 2 that an odd-looking missile had collided with a building in Kharkiv. Desperate to get her hands on it, she started ringing her connections in the Ukrainian military. She had the twisted wreckage spread out in front of her in a safe place in the Ukrainian capital in less than a week.

She started disassembling it and took pictures of every component, down to the tiny computer chips and screws that were smaller than her fingernails. It was her task to demonstrate that this was not a Russian missile, even though she could tell practically instantly.

A little letter from the Korean alphabet was discovered by Ms. Kimachuk among the jumble of cables and metal. Then she saw an even more significant feature. Some sections of the shell had the stamp 112. This is equivalent to the North Korean calendar year 2023. She became aware that she was staring at the first concrete proof that her nation was being attacked with weapons from North Korea.

We had heard that they had sent some weaponry to Russia, but I was able to examine, feel, and observe it in a manner that no one else had been able to. Over the phone from Kyiv, she informed me that this was really thrilling.

The Ukrainian military claims that since then, Russia has launched many North Korean missiles into its territory. They've caused over 70 injuries and at least 24 deaths.

Despite all the current concern that Kim Jong Un is getting ready to launch a nuclear war, the potential of North Korea to prolong ongoing conflicts and contribute to international instability poses a greater immediate danger.

Ms. Kimachuk is employed by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a group that recovers and analyzes weaponry from conflicts in order to determine its manufacturing process. However, the most astounding discovery didn't surface until after she had completed taking pictures of the missile debris and her team had examined hundreds of its individual parts.

It was jam-packed with the newest international technologies. Over the previous five years, the majority of the electronic components had been produced in the US and Europe. As recently as March 2023, a computer chip was manufactured in the United States. This indicated that, in a couple of months, North Korea had secretly manufactured the missile, smuggled it to Russia, where it was delivered to the front lines and shot, all while obtaining essential weaponry components illegally.

"This was the biggest surprise, that despite being beneath severe sanctions for almost two decades, North Korea continues to be able to get its hands on all it needs to make its weapons, and it's doing so with extraordinary speed," said Damien Spleeters, the deputy director of CAR.

Joseph Byrne, a North Korea specialist at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defense think tank in London, was also taken aback.

"I never thought I would see North Korean ballistic missiles that is employed to kill people on European soil," he said. Since Mr. Kim visited Vladimir Putin in Russia in September of last year to discuss possible arms deals, he and his colleagues at RUSI have been monitoring the transfer of North Korean weaponry to Russia.

They have been able to see four Russian cargo ships, each carrying hundreds of containers at a time, moving back and forth between North Korea and a Russian military port thanks to satellite photography.

RUSI believes that 7,000 containers containing over a million grad rockets and ammunition shells—the kind that can be launched in massive volleys off of trucks—have been supplied in total. Although North Korea and Russia have disputed the exchange, US, UK, and South Korean intelligence support their findings.

At a time when the US and Europe have been unsure of what armaments to send, Russia is able to continue hitting Ukrainian towns thanks to these highly sought-after shells and rockets, according to Mr. Byrne.

Purchasing and dismissing

However, Mr. Byrne and his colleagues have been particularly worried about the introduction of ballistic missiles into combat because of what they disclose about North Korea's nuclear development.

North Korea has been selling weapons overseas since the 1980s, mostly to nations in the Middle East and North Africa, such as Libya, Syria, and Iran. They have often been outdated, poorly regarded missiles in the Soviet mold. There is proof that during their assault on October 7th, Hamas gunmen most likely utilized some of Pyongyang's outdated rocket-propelled grenades.

Kim and Putin: Companions in need of ammo

What kind of weaponry is being sent to Ukraine?

Which missiles have been tested by North Korea?

However, the missile launched on January 2 that Ms. Kimachuk disassembled seemed to be Pyongyang's most advanced short-range missile, the Hwasong 11, which has a maximum range of 700 kilometers (435 miles).

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, an authority on North Korean weaponry and non-proliferation, asserts that while the Ukrainians have played down their accuracy, they don't seem to be all that much worse than the Russian rockets.

Dr. Lewis clarified that the benefit of these missiles is their very low cost. This implies that you may increase your purchases and ammunition in an attempt to overpower air defenses, as the Russians seem to be doing.

The subject of how many of these missiles the North Koreans are able to make is then brought up. According to the South Korean government, Pyongyang's weapons facilities were working nonstop, and Dr. Lewis, who has been analyzing the plants using satellite images, estimates that they can produce a few hundred bombs annually. North Korea was recently shown to have delivered 6,700 containers of munitions to Russia.

Mr. Spleeters and his colleagues are still in disbelief at their finding, and they are now attempting to figure out how this is feasible considering that businesses are not allowed to export components to North Korea.

According to Mr. Spleeters, a large number of the computer chips that control our phones, washing machines, and automobiles are also essential to contemporary weapons, helping them find their targets via the air.

The sheer volume of them being sold worldwide is astounding. Manufacturers sometimes have no clue where their goods wind up since they sell to distributors who then sell them to consumers in their millions.

Nevertheless, Mr. Byrne was displeased to discover how many of the missile's parts originated in the West. It demonstrated that North Korea's procurement networks were stronger and more efficient than even he, an expert on these networks, had previously thought.

According to his observations, North Koreans living abroad established fictitious businesses in Hong Kong or other central Asian nations in order to purchase the goods using mostly cash that was stolen. After that, they often ship the goods over China's border to North Korea. Once a fraudulent firm is exposed and approved, a new one will appear shortly after.

Although sanctions have long been seen as an ineffective weapon against these networks, they must be consistently updated and implemented if they are to be effective. Since 2017, neither China nor Russia have agreed to reimpose sanctions on North Korea.

Moscow is now breaking the exact sanctions it previously supported as a UN Security Council member by purchasing Pyongyang's weapons. Then, perhaps to escape scrutiny, it essentially abolished a UN panel that kept track of sanctions violations early this year.

"We are witnessing the real-time crumbling of UN sanctions against North Korea, and this buys Pyongyang a lot of breathing space" , said Byrne.

The ramifications of all of this go far beyond the conflict in Ukraine.

Mr. Byrne said, "The North Koreans are the real winners here." "They were able to assist the Russians in a significant manner, and this has bought them a tonne of leverage" .

Large-scale oil exports from Russia to North Korea were verified by RUSI in March, and railcars carrying what seem to be rice and flour were seen crossing the land border between the two nations. This purchase, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds, would strengthen Pyongyang's armed forces in addition to its economy.

Russia could provide the North with the raw materials it needs to keep producing missiles, as well as military hardware like fighter planes and, in the worst case scenario, the technological know-how it needs to upgrade its nuclear arsenal.

In addition, the North is gaining the opportunity to test-fire its newest missiles in an actual combat situation. It will be possible to improve them with the help of this important data.

Pyongyang: A major source of missiles?

Even more concerning is the fact that the conflict is giving North Korea a front to the outside world.

According to Dr. Lewis, Pyongyang will want to sell its weapons to other nations now that it is making them in large quantities. If the missiles are good enough for Russia, then they will be good enough for others, particularly because the Russians are leading by example when it comes to breaking sanctions.

According to his forecast, North Korea will grow to be a significant missile supplier to nations in the China, Russia, and Iran alliance. The US expressed "extreme concern" that North Korea would be collaborating with Iran on its nuclear and ballistic weapons programs after Iran's attack on Israel earlier this month.

Mr. Spleeters said, "I see a lot of gloomy faces in which we talk about this problem." "But the good news is that while we know how reliant they are on foreign technology, that we can do something about it" .

Mr. Spleeters is hopeful that they can shut off North Korea's supply channels by collaborating with industry. Before the illegal network could finish a crucial transaction, his team was able to locate and shut it down.

Dr. Lewis, however, is not quite persuaded.

He added that the West has eventually failed in its endeavor to control the rogue state. "We can make it harder, more inconvenient, potentially raise the cost, but none of this is going to prevent North Korea form making these weapons," he said.

Dr. Lewis adds that in addition to providing it with status and political influence, its missiles are now bringing in enormous sums of money. Why, therefore, would Kim Jong Un ever relinquish them now?