As of: February 19, 2024, 11:42 a.m
By: Sven Hauberg
Comments
Press
Split
North Korea supplies Russia, South Korea supplies Ukraine: both countries play a key role in the Ukraine war.
This is also due to the division of the Korean peninsula.
Three injured and several damaged buildings: That is the sad result of a Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv at the beginning of the month.
The Russian army fired five rockets at around 6 a.m. on February 7th at the megacity in eastern Ukraine. According to local authorities, two of them were said to have been ballistic missiles of the “Hwasong-11Ga” type.
“Hwasong” – in German: Fire Star – is the name for a type of rocket from North Korea, the “11Ga” series was presented six years ago during a military parade in Pyongyang.
According to US information, the “Hwasong-11Ga” was used in the Ukraine war for the first time a few weeks ago, also in the Kharkiv region; at least one woman was killed then.
The rocket was probably fired from southern Russia.
North Korea and Russia, which share a 17-kilometer border, are currently closer than they have been in decades.
Last September, Kim Jong-un traveled to the Russian Far East to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the first time North Korea's dictator left his isolated country since the start of the corona pandemic.
And Putin will soon be making a return visit to Pyongyang.
In his luggage he could have further support for North Korea's satellite program, but also the promise to deliver oil or food.
Kim Jong-un visiting a Russian aircraft factory in September: The country has been supplying Russia with weapons for months.
© AFP
North Korea and Ukraine War: Kim calls for increased missile production
It is a political alliance with fatal consequences for Ukraine.
According to intelligence information from Seoul, North Korea had already started delivering more than a million artillery shells to Russia a few weeks before the summit.
Short-range ballistic missiles, anti-tank missiles and mobile air defense missiles followed in November at the latest.
Both countries deny these arms deals, which violate UN sanctions that Russia itself once supported.
However, satellite images, which were evaluated by the USA, among others, show how thousands of containers full of weapons and ammunition were brought from North Korea to the front by ship and train in recent months.
Last summer, Kim Jong-un also ordered an “exponential” increase in the production of short-range ballistic missiles such as the “Hwasong-11Ga”.
Many of the weapons that are now ending up on the front lines were developed in collaboration with Russian or Soviet engineers, so they are compatible with the Russian army's systems.
If North Korea continues to supply large quantities of military equipment to Putin, “then Russia will be relatively well supplied,” says military expert Gustav Gressel from the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“You can see that the Russians are currently firing quite a lot.
If they only had to make do with what they could produce themselves, then they would have to manage their ammunition much more carefully.” Estimates suggest that Russia currently fires around 10,000 artillery shells every day;
According to Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umyerov, this is up to ten times more than Ukraine has at its disposal.
There are an above-average number of unexploded bombs among North Korean ammunition, says Gressel.
“Russia just shoots everything they can get somewhere.
And because there is so much, this tactic works.”
My news
Traffic light is annoyed with “King Söder”: Baerbock says read breakfast at the security conference
Payment card for asylum seekers: Habeck causes the next dispute - Kubicki threatens to break the traffic light
“On Putin’s side”: Trump finds himself caught in the crossfire after Navalny’s death
Bulwark against Putin fallen: Chaos retreat from Avdiivka - Ukrainians probably let soldiers read back
Putin's new killer missile: now deadly in fog and rain
1 hour ago
Survey earthquake for the AfD: Right-wingers are slipping - Wagenknecht marches on read
Ukraine relies on ammunition from South Korea
Kiev, on the other hand, has long been complaining about a lack of ammunition.
Ukraine has increased production in its own country.
But the dependencies on the Western allies are great - and they have not been delivering enough for a long time.
The European Union will miss its goal of sending one million shots to Ukraine by March.
And in the USA, a $60 billion aid package for Ukraine was approved by the Senate a few days ago, but not yet by the House of Representatives.
The Republicans are slowing down.
“The warehouses are empty in the West, and ammunition production will only reach the point where it would be needed for a major war at the end of this year,” says Gressel.
One of Ukraine's most important suppliers is South Korea - North Korea's neighbor, which Kim Jong-un declared his main enemy at the beginning of the year.
Seoul does not deliver directly to Kiev, but to the USA and Poland, for example.
This, according to Gressel, enabled the two countries to “take their own ammunition from the depot and give it to Ukraine.”
South Korea delivered 1.5 million shots to the USA alone;
and with Poland, South Korea concluded a record contract in the summer of 2022 for the delivery and construction of, among other things, 1,000 battle tanks and 48 combat aircraft worth a total of 15 billion US dollars; the first deliveries took place just four months later.
“Without South Korea, the Ukrainian counteroffensive last summer would not have happened,” believes Gressel.
Hostility between North and South Korea promotes arms production
The fact that South Korea can supply so much ammunition and weapons is due to the constant threat from the North, says the military expert.
Both countries are still at war; Kim Jong-un has been arming himself for years, including nuclear weapons.
“This has led to South Korea stockpiling an enormous amount of artillery.
The country also has large production capacities to supply itself with ammunition in the event of war.” Tensions with China also play a role in South Korea’s arms efforts.
South Korea invests around 2.5 percent of its economic output in armaments.
Ukraine is now benefiting from this.
But for Seoul, too, the deal with Ukraine's allies means more than just a lucrative deal or the good feeling of supporting the country under attack.
Ukraine, says Gressel, is an “enormous laboratory” for the two Koreas.
For Seoul, because the Ukraine war shows how effective Western missile defense systems such as “Patriot” are against North Korean missiles - South Korea itself has several of these US systems.
Conversely, the Kim regime is also learning how to counter the South's missile defenses in the event of war.
In addition, as cynical as it sounds, the Ukraine war is something of a promotional event for North and South Korea for the performance of their own arms industry.
Pyongyang has always made a lot of money from arms sales, for example to Syria or Hamas.
South Korea, in turn, is the fastest growing arms exporter in the world, according to the Stockholm peace research institute Sipri.
President Yoon Suk-yeol should be happy about that.
He has set a goal of making South Korea the world's fourth-largest arms dealer, behind the United States, Russia and France.