North Korea Sends Troops to Ukraine in a Deal with Russia: A Repeat of History?

Throughout modern history, Koreans have fought in wars abroad, from Japan’s Pacific War to America’s Vietnam campaign. Now, North Korea is deploying elite troops to aid Russia in Ukraine. Like past deployments, this move is driven by financial incentives and strategic interests. Kim Jong-un aims to strengthen ties with Russia, hoping for military technology or support against South Korea. However, Russian prejudice and disregard for North Korean troops may relegate them to high-risk, low-reward roles.

Once again, Koreans Will Fight In Someone Else’s War: For the fourth time in recent history, Korean soldiers are fighting in another country’s war.  Those destinations have all been at the behest of regional major powers: Japan, China, the United States, and now Russia. Historically, the consequences for Korea of its young men fighting outside the Peninsula have been a complicated mix of good and bad.

The reasons Koreans went abroad to fight were both financial and political.

During the Pacific War, when Korea was under a Japanese colonial government, many Koreans volunteered to join Japan’s armed forces. Their principal motivation was to escape poverty, as nearly all of them were from peasant families. Recruiters promised that volunteers would get priority consideration for government jobs after finishing their military service.

At the same time, various groups of Koreans traveled to China and joined guerrilla groups fighting against the invading Japanese Army. Their motivation was to degrade Japan’s military strength and thereby indirectly help liberate Korea from occupation by Japan.

From 1964 to 1973, about 320,000 South Korean (ROK) troops fought in South Vietnam. Seoul had offered to send troops earlier, but U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy demurred. With the expansion of war, Lyndon Johnson accepted the offer.  

South Korean President Park Chung Hee’s motivations were both strategic and economic, as he hoped Korean assistance to the U.S. campaign to prevent the communization of South Vietnam would prevent Washington from withdrawing support from South Korea. 

Park also increasingly appreciated the value of the tangible benefits he gained from the U.S. as a result of the Korean troop deployment. These benefits, which included $5 billion towards U.S. help in modernizing the ROK military, extra pay for South Korean soldiers, trade with Vietnam, and contracts for Korean companies provided a significant boost to the ROK’s economic development. Fighting abroad, however, also had negative repercussions for the Korean troops and their homeland.

The Japanese colonial government was ambivalent about recruiting Koreans for military service.  Japan’s need for more manpower grew after the seizure of large amounts of territory in northeast China and grew further with the expansion of the war into Southeast Asia and the Pacific. At the same time, however, the Japanese considered Koreans lacking in culture, character, intelligence, and loyalty toward Japan.  

By 1944, the need for more personnel forced the issue, and Japan implemented a draft in Korea.  In the Imperial Japanese military, superiors routinely treated inferiors harshly, and Korean soldiers were at the bottom of the hierarchy. They typically got relatively undesirable assignments and suffered mistreatment by comrades. According to multiple reports, they manifested their frustrations through the cruel treatment of Allied prisoners.

About ten percent of the Koreans in the Japanese military lost their lives. This is quite high considering that only a small fraction of Koreans fought on the front lines, and most had joined near the end of the conflict and were still in training at the war’s end.

In 1967, emboldened by the prestige they enjoyed as war heroes, the Kapsan Faction of former anti-Japan guerrilla fighters challanged the authority of North Korean (DPRK) leader Kim Il-sung. The Faction members criticized Kim’s cult of personality, advocated changing the government’s economic policies, and promoted their leader as a successor to Kim. 

Much of their agenda would have been favorable for North Korea, however, Kim’s response was to imprison the former guerrillas and solidify totalitarianism in North Korea.

Fighting together in Vietnam did surprisingly little to improve the alliance relationship between the U.S. and South Korea, which was one of Park’s main goals. As the U.S. government relied on Korean troops to cover the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, Park came to believe the U.S. treatment of the ROK was exploitative and under-appreciative. 

The Vietnam experience convinced Park to move away from dependence on the U.S. 

He attempted to acquire nuclear weapons. There were negative consequences for South Korean society as Park proclaimed a new constitution giving himself dictatorial powers.

Korean veterans of the war in Vietnam also carry the legacy of many massacres. By one reckoning, over eighty large-scale war crimes committed by South Korean soldiers, killing 9,000 Vietnamese civilians. 

Similar to previous cases, Pyongyang sends its soldiers to a foreign land in the hope of gaining financial and especially strategic benefits. Russia will reportedly pay the North Korean mercenaries, which will be a modest source of foreign currency. 

More importantly, Kim providing additional manpower will obligate Putin to take more seriously Pyongyang’s requests and desires, which probably include technical assistance with DPRK missile development and might also include Russian support for an aggressive North Korean action against the ROK.

This Russian adventure might hold risks that echo the recent past.  

Russian commanders might not trust North Korean troops with important tasks because of language barriers or racial/cultural prejudice. The DPRK soldiers might become cannon fodder, their blood sacrafice being considored lesser than. Since they are already the products of a merciless political system, they are a war crimes risk. 

Perhaps the most profound downside is that the new cooperation with Russia deepens the DPRK’s bond with the axis of evil, which will prolong the captivity of North Koreans by a government that serves them so extraordinarily badly. 

About the Author: Denny Roy 

Denny Roy is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu specializing in Asia-Pacific strategic and security issues.  He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and is the author of four books and many journal and op-ed articles.

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