North Korean Troops in Ukraine: The Final Blow to Korean Reunification?

North Korea’s deployment of troops to support Russia in Ukraine has solidified the split between North and South Korea, putting an end to any notion of peaceful reunification. While North Korea’s presence may not alter the battlefield, it has escalated geopolitical tension.

Same Peninsula but Worlds Apart: North Korean Soldiers in Ukraine is the Nail in the Coffin for Peaceful Korean Reunification - Are the battle-hardened Ukrainian soldiers shivering in their boots, anxiously anticipating the arrival of the North Koreans side-by-side with their Russian compatriots? Is the next Admiral Yi Sun-sin among the ranks of the Hermit Kingdom’s horde? Is this the latchkey moment the Kim Dynasty was long anticipating, accumulating power to push their armies into a foreign land to show up their adversary: the conniving American Empire?

Likely not. The North Korean presence on the battlefields of Ukraine will serve to bolster numbers on the front and otherwise to keep the Russian war machine running as efficiently as possible, or at least, as it possibly can.

No, the North Koreans on the ground will probably not drastically change much, however, geopolitically, this changes everything.

New Pieces on the Chess Board

While nearly every country has taken a side in the Russo-Ukrainian war, either through government commitment or silently conforming towards their preferred hegemon's bloc, both of the countries comprising the Korean peninsula have entered the fray and destroyed the idea that this war is strictly “European.” As the average Russian soldier struggles with Korean vocab awaiting their new allies to arrive, South Korea threatens to up the ante and send weapons directly to Ukraine.

This tit-for-tat behavior with North Korea is typical of the current South Korean President Yoon’s administration, one that is currently in hot water with record levels of low approval ratings of his domestic and foreign policy being at under forty percent. Yoon’s party clings to a tried-and-true Conservative method of responding to North Korean aggression with an equal or greater amount of escalation, as detailed by Voice of America Seoul Bureau Chief William Gallo, “During periods of military tensions, South Korea has often embraced a policy of retaliating with at least three times as much force as North Korea. The “three-to-one” policy stretches back at least to 2010, when South Korea responded to North Korea’s deadly shelling of the frontline island of Yeonpyeong.”

The Trash Balloon incident, Kim Jong-un declaring South Korea to be an enemy nation and abandoning the goal of peaceful reunification, sending North Korean troops to aid Russia in Ukraine, and most recently conducting an ICBM test days before the U.S. election have led to both states to pull apart from one another. 

This Rift Shows No Sign of Stopping

North and South Korea now act as aides towards opposing sides of a proxy war between the Russian Federation very, very loosely backed by the BRICS bloc, and the sovereign Ukraine backed by NATO and their allies, the same forces that fought against each other on the Korean Peninsula in what was also a proxy war over seventy years ago.

Korean Reunification looked to be just on the horizon after German reunification and the fall of the USSR, but ultimately, the window of opportunity slammed shut on the fingers of the hopeful. 

The Sunshine Policy of the Kim Dae-jung and Rho Moo-hyun presidencies, seeking cooperation with North Korea without the direct goal of absorption, looked to be just the forward-thinking route to take to lead inter-Korean relations to a more agreeable position, but North Korea only dangled a carrot-on-a-stick in front of South Korea, in turn, making an ass of themselves.

The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyongyang was shaped up to be just as influential as the 1988 Seoul Olympics, which showed the nations of the world that South Korea was not some forgettable backwater country, but a serious, burgeoning Asian power. In the end, the Olympic fire was extinguished, and the ambition for substantial change died along with it.

Indeed, as the generation that remembers one unified Korea after liberation from Japanese colonialism fades away with age, so too does the interest and/or incentive to pursue that goal. 

About the Author: Lake Dobson

Lake Dodson is an Assistant Editor for the National Interest. His interests are Korean-American relations, cybersecurity policy, and nuclear energy/weapons policy. He currently studies the Korean language and has completed courses on North-South Korean Relations and conducted various experiments on an AGN-201K Nuclear Reactor at the prestigious Kyung-hee University in Suwon, South Korea. His specific interests are effective nuclear energy policy, cyber-security, and the economy and politics of East Asia. He holds a BA from the University of Mississippi. 

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