- Written by Gene Mackenzie
- Seoul correspondent
On January 2nd, Kristina Kimachuk, a young Ukrainian weapons inspector, received word that an unusually shaped missile had hit a building in Kharkiv. She started calling her contacts in the Ukrainian military to try to get it. Less than a week later, shattered rubble was laid out in front of her in a secure location in the capital, Kiev.
She took it apart and began photographing all the parts, including screws and computer chips smaller than fingernails. She could tell almost immediately that this was not a Russian missile, but her challenge was to prove it.
Buried in the mess of metal and gushing wires, Kimachuk found tiny letters of the Korean alphabet. Then she stumbled upon an even more important fact. Some of the shells were stamped with the number 112. This corresponds to her year 2023 in the North Korean calendar. She realized she was seeing the first hard evidence that North Korean weapons were used to attack her country.
“We had heard that they had delivered some weapons to Russia, and we were able to see it, touch it and examine it in a way that no one had ever been able to do before. This was very exciting. I did,” she told me over the phone. From Kyiv.
Since then, Ukraine's military has announced that Russia has fired dozens of North Korean missiles into its territory. At least 24 people were killed and more than 70 injured.
Kimachukwu works for Conflict Arms Research (CAR), an organization that recovers weapons used in war and discovers how they were made. But the most surprising revelation came after she finished photographing the missile wreckage and her team analyzed hundreds of parts.
It was packed with the latest foreign technology. Most of the electronic components have been manufactured in the United States and Europe for the past few years. There were also US-made computer chips in March 2023. This means that North Korea illegally procured critical weapon components, smuggled them into the country, assembled the missiles, secretly shipped them to Russia, and then shipped them back to Russia. I was sent to the front line and fired, all within a few months.
“This was the biggest surprise: Despite being under harsh sanctions for nearly 20 years, North Korea is still acquiring everything it needs to manufacture weapons at an unprecedented rate,” the agency said. Deputy Commissioner Damian Spreters said. car.
In London, Joseph Byrne, a North Korea expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a defense think tank, was equally appalled.
“I never expected to see North Korean ballistic missiles used to kill people on European territory,” he said. Kim and the RUSI team have been tracking North Korean arms shipments to Russia since September last year, when they met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia to finalize an alleged arms deal.
Using satellite imagery, they were able to observe four Russian cargo ships shuttling between North Korea and Russian military ports, carrying hundreds of containers at a time.
RUSI estimates that a total of 7,000 containers were sent, each containing more than a million rounds of ammunition and graduate rockets, the kind that could be fired in large volleys from trucks. Their assessment is supported by intelligence from the US, UK and South Korea, but Russia and North Korea deny the deal.
“These artillery shells and rockets are some of the most wanted in the world today, and as the United States and Europe struggle to decide which weapons to provide, Russia continues to attack Ukrainian cities. “We're making it possible,” Byrne said.
buy and fire
But Byrne and his colleagues are most concerned about the arrival of ballistic missiles onto the battlefield. This is because North Korea's weapons development plans have become clear.
Since the 1980s, North Korea has sold weapons overseas, primarily to countries in North Africa and the Middle East, including Libya, Syria, and Iran. These tended to be older Soviet style missiles and did not have a good reputation. There is evidence that Hamas fighters likely used some of North Korea's older rocket-propelled grenades in the attack on October 7 last year.
However, the missile fired on January 2 that Kimachuk disassembled appears to be Pyongyang's most sophisticated short-range missile, the Hwasong-11, which can fly up to 700 kilometers (435 miles).
Although Ukrainians downplay their accuracy, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on North Korean weapons and nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, says they don't seem much worse than Russian missiles. There is.
Dr. Lewis explained that the advantage of these missiles is that they are very cheap. This means they can buy more supplies and fire more shots in hopes of overwhelming air defense, which is exactly what the Russians appear to be doing.
This raises the question of how many of these missiles North Korea can produce. The South Korean government recently observed that North Korea sent 6,700 munitions containers to Russia, said North Korea's weapons factories are operating at full capacity, and is studying these factories via satellite. Dr. Lewis said he believes these factories can produce large quantities of several weapons. 100 per year.
Spreters and his team are still reeling from the discovery and are trying to figure out how this was possible when companies are banned from selling parts to North Korea.
Spreters said many of the computer chips that are essential to modern weapons and guide them through the air to their intended targets are similar to those used to power cell phones, washing machines and cars. explained that they are the same.
These are sold in amazing numbers all over the world. Manufacturers sell to distributors in the billions, and distributors sell products in the millions. That means they often have no idea where their products will end up.
Still, Byrne was annoyed to learn that a number of the components in the missile came from Western countries. This proved that North Korea's procurement networks were more robust and effective than even he, who investigated these networks, realized.
In his experience, North Koreans based overseas set up fake companies in Hong Kong and other Central Asian countries and mainly use stolen cash to purchase goods. The products are then usually sent across the border with China to North Korea. Once a fake company is discovered and sanctioned, another quickly pops up in its place.
Sanctions have long been considered an imperfect tool for combating these networks, but they need to be regularly updated and enforced to be effective. Russia and China have refused to impose new sanctions on North Korea since 2017.
By purchasing North Korean weapons, Moscow is now violating the very sanctions it once voted on as a member of the United Nations Security Council. And earlier this year, it effectively dissolved the U.N. committee that monitors sanctions violations, likely to avoid scrutiny.
“We're seeing UN sanctions against North Korea crumble in real time, and that's giving North Korea a lot of breathing room,” Byrne said.
All of this has implications far beyond the Ukraine war.
“The real winners here are the North Koreans,” Byrne said. “They supported the Russians in important ways, and this allowed the Russians to gain significant influence.”
RUSI reported in March that large quantities of oil were being shipped from Russia to North Korea, while railcars carrying what appeared to be rice and flour were seen crossing the border. The deal is thought to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds and will strengthen North Korea's economy as well as its military.
Russia could also provide North Korea with raw materials to continue manufacturing military equipment such as missiles and fighter jets, and, in the most extreme cases, technical assistance to improve its nuclear weapons.
Additionally, North Korea has the opportunity to test its latest missiles in a real-life scenario for the first time. You can use this valuable data to make your products better.
North Korea: A major missile supplier?
Even more troubling is that the war provides North Korea with a shop window to the rest of the world.
Since North Korea is now mass producing these weapons, it will likely want to sell its missiles to more countries, and if its missiles are good enough for Russia, they will be good enough for other countries as well. It will be very useful, Dr. Lewis said. Especially since Russia is setting an example. It's okay to violate sanctions.
He predicts that North Korea will become a major supplier of missiles to China, Russia, and Iran in the future. Following Iran's attack on Israel this month, the United States said it was “very concerned” that North Korea might cooperate with Iran on its nuclear and ballistic weapons programs.
“When you talk about this issue, a lot of people get a dark look,” Spreters said. “But the good news is that now we know how dependent they are on foreign technology, we can do something about it.”
Spreters is optimistic that by working with manufacturers, they can cut off the North Korean supply chain. His team has already successfully identified and shut down illicit networks before completing important sales.
But Dr. Lewis isn't convinced.
“You can make it more difficult, you can make it more inconvenient, you can probably make it more expensive, but none of that will prevent North Korea from producing these weapons,” he said, adding that Western countries are trying to contain the rogue state. Attempts to do so were ultimately unsuccessful, he added.
Today, Dr. Lewis explained, missiles are not only a source of prestige and political power, but also generate huge amounts of money. So why would Kim Jong Un abandon them now?