10/20/2024 – Translated from Ukrainian via Google and OFP
Can North Korea participate in the war against Ukraine? Maybe she is already doing it.
Korean localized copies of Russian “Iskanders” are launched at us; Bulsae-4 ATGMs (quite modern and dangerous) were fixed at the front; several million projectiles were handed over to the Russians – of poor quality and of various types, it is difficult to shoot them at one sight, but from two to five million shots is serious, writes Kyrylo Danylchenko for LB.ua.
What will North Korea do for this? Nothing special compared to what it is now.
As was nothing for Cuba when its contingent fought in Algeria and the civil war in Angola in the last century.
Let me remind you that up to 20,000 Cubans participated in Operation Carlota (Cuban intervention in Angola) in 1975, who were flown in by airplanes. Artillery and armored vehicles were brought to them by ships.
The Cuban contingent massively used “grads”, deployed a tank battalion and took an active part in the war until 1991 – at its peak its number was 55 thousand bayonets, 10 thousand – losses killed and seriously wounded.
They pulled chestnuts from the fire for the USSR, receiving equipment, currency, raw materials, technologies and trained fighters in foreign wars.
What else could the Cuban West do, apart from what it had already done since 1962: milk coupons for children, rice, 5 eggs a month and 0.5 liters of soybean oil?
How can they do nothing to Iran, when its “pro-boyfriends” are fighting in Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, when the Americans on the route to the port of Hodeida stop and filled with components of anti-ship missiles and engines for ballistics.
Not only are Iranians dying all over the Middle East, but the Ayatollah regime is recruiting Shiites from Afghanistan, and those for $500-700 are also willing to kill and die.
By the way, Hazaras from “Fatimiyun” showed themselves quite well: they took part in the breakthrough of the blockade of Deir ez-Zor, in operations against the Islamic State.
What happened to Iran because Basij agents took 20,000 Fatimiyuna fighters out of three million Afghan refugees?
It’s okay – the common people ate chicken for the holiday and still eat it, the officials of the IRGC rested on the Mediterranean Sea in Lebanon and Syria, and are still resting.
Protests in Iran are dispersed with automatic fire, morality police kill girls without headscarves.
So, against this background, why should the Koreans not appear in Ukraine?
Kim is interested in what he might encounter in the event of future conflicts — drones, including long distant ones, various air defense systems, HIMARS, communication systems.
Secondly, the regime is binding the South and the Americans on the Asian TV — all these demonstrative undermining of roads, putting eight artillery brigades on alert.
Of course, no reasonable person can say that the creators of “Samsung” suddenly went crazy and decided to occupy the north.
But the reserves of the US Asian Command, from which several hundreds of thousands of projectiles were allocated for Ukraine, should be preserved, and aid should not be increased from Seoul’s reserves – it is quite possible.
Plus, Kim wants any technology — not just spy satellites or missile programs, especially ICBMs — to be able to get Washington.
For an isolated North Korea, ANY technology is worth its weight in gold: from modern rations in retort systems and fuel purification to cameras and facial recognition systems.
All possible sanctions have been implemented, even from the UN (the only one is that the Russian Federation vetoed the Commission for the Verification of Missile Programs): the North Koreans are supplied with food, medicine and fuel oil for the TPP, and sometimes this was also limited.
And this is clear evidence of why sanctions cannot be considered as the only working tool, apart from deterrence, operations against the nuclear programs and drone components of rogue countries.
If on your side the Russian Federation, where the entire Mendeleev table is in the bowels and some technologies, and China, the second economy of the world, then the very issue of sanctions becomes non-obvious. Do they work in principle?
We are carrying out strategic bombing of the Russian Federation, the West has introduced restrictions on oil prices, the Russians are unable to produce cars and are resuming the production of bicycles from the times of the USSR? What is there, what is the forecast for the fall in GDP? No, moderate growth.
Coalition partners will transfer something, steal something and copy it in the West, buy something to circumvent sanctions.
Is a Nigerian one-day firm that buys irrigation electronics and agricultural drones under sanctions?
And can’t she then resell it all with a margin to Russia or North Korea?
Well, they were added to the list, and Iranians, Russians or Koreans registered ten more of the same in the capital of Nigeria.
Yes, in general, totalitarian regimes degrade, but so far they skim off the cream of cooperation.
For example, Iran has mastered paired copies of “Cornets-E” capable of penetrating the defense of the Israeli active defense “Meil Ruah” (“Windbreaker”). And if at first launchers with markings from the Russian Federation were used in the region and the Persians produced only ATGMs, now in Lebanon the Israel Defense Forces have captured the purely Iranian localization “Dekhlavia”.
That is why several thousand people, whom the intelligence reported as a “Buryat battalion” (according to the state, rather a brigade), and in the future even more North Koreans may well end up on the LBZ.
Of course, they will be mixed with other units in order not to focus fire, to be used where there is a chance to develop success.
And, of course, all these mercenaries from Nepal and sub-Saharan Africa are a sign that things are not going according to plan in Moscow, the pace of losses is greater than they have time to prepare, supply and arm.
But with the DPRK, there is something else – they want to reduce dependence on China, they want technology, food and fuel.
And punishment is not planned in the near future. After all, South Korea does not want to get involved in a conflict on its borders and hang 25 million people who do not know what the Internet is and cry when their beloved leader leaves.
Because any solidarity taxes for decades, as after the unification of Germany, will appear to them as a holiday.
Therefore, North Korea fired more than 200 projectiles at islands under the South’s jurisdiction last January, and Seoul kept a stony face. Now is not the time for war. And it will never be in time.
The US is also unlikely to want to spend a trillion on a war that will free millions of people from tyranny and to learn how to wash their hands and use a smartphone.
It is difficult to carry out sabotage in a closed, propaganda-washed society, cyberattacks are impossible, because there is no Internet of Things. You can destroy the test site with airstrikes, and eight artillery brigades of the DPRK will tear apart Seoul and the entire Asian market.
Therefore, once again: when Ukraine, which for years occupied 8-10th place in the world in metal smelting, has hundreds of thousands of workers in the chemical industry, produces in a closed cycle shells, anti-aircraft missiles, R-27 air-to-air (it can be integrated into the ground-to-air ) BTR-3 and 4, a high-precision weapon, the whole society will work for victory, only then will the Nepalese or Koreans on the front not matter at all.
Because it will be a one-way ticket for them.
The West will continue to supply us with weapons and equipment, volunteers are coming here. But the Koreans themselves, with the support of the USA, the bases and the treaty on joint defense (the absolute majority of such treaties are precisely in this region), are not ready to resolve issues with the regime near their borders. Therefore, we should not wait for someone to do the work for us.
The West will not react because it lacks any measure of political will to do so. It hopes all of this will simply fade away, like a bad dream when you wake up. This is not a strategy, this is a dangerous game that can and is provoking the trash countries to increase the risks of their adventurous escalations. You get bolder when you prod a sleeping guard dog, and he simply lifts his head, looks at you, says woof, and goes back to sleep.
One thing I wonder about is how effective the North Korean soldiers will be. The look impressive marching in huge numbers, but to my knowledge they’ve never been battle-tested.
Koreans in Vietnam were known to be tough fighters. However, I think it might be different with the half-starved north koreans who have little education except learning the 50 ways to show love to their supreme leader and demigod, Kim Ill Junk.