Kim Jong Un
Credit: KCNA via Reuters Photo
Seoul, South Korea — North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, watched attack drones crash into cars and tanks this week, creating balls of flame. Then, according to state media reports Friday, he ordered mass production of drones like them, which are becoming an increasingly important addition to the North’s growing arsenal.
Kim has been focused on compensating for the largely decrepit state of his military’s conventional weapons. He has added an array of new weapons, including nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles and underwater attack drones. One of Kim’s main takeaways from the war between Russia and Ukraine, in which North Korean troops are now fighting on Russia’s side, has been the importance of drones in modern warfare, military analysts said.
To North Korea, which has suffered from chronic shortages of fuel and spare parts for its armed forces, low-cost weapons like drones are especially attractive, the analysts said.
During military parades in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, in recent years, Kim has shown off various reconnaissance and attack drones that military experts said resembled Chinese and American drone models in appearance, if not technology.
“The military authorities in the world will probably recognize that the drones are achieving clear successes in big and small conflicts,” Kim said Thursday while visiting the North’s Unmanned Aerial Technology Complex, where he watched the drone exercises, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
Drones have become “an essential requirement” because of “their ever-expanding range of use in military activities, low production cost and simple production lines,” Kim was quoted as saying.
The article said North Korea had achieved “remarkable successes” in drone development, which could not be independently verified. But analysts said building drones would not be a major technological challenge for North Korea, which has developed nuclear weapons and long-range rocket engines.
Kim’s emphasis on drones raised speculation among analysts that North Korea, which has strengthened its ties with Moscow, was obtaining Russian technology to help develop drones for use on the Korean Peninsula and for export. But they said it was unclear whether the North could ramp up production quickly enough to supply them for Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The North Korean news agency blurred the photos of the drones Kim was said to have inspected. But the report came at a time when North Korea’s military capabilities have drawn global attention.
Kim has sent as many as 13,000 North Korean troops to Russia to bolster Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, according to some estimates. Some of those soldiers have gone into battle alongside Russian soldiers in recent days, according to South Korean and United States officials.
The deployment is North Korea’s first major engagement in an armed conflict since the Korean War of 1950-53, and it highlights its deepening military ties with Russia. It has also generated speculation about what the North will get from Moscow in return. One such reward is widely expected to be Russian help in advancing North Korea’s nuclear missile program and modernizing its conventional military.
The North Korean military will also gain combat experience and learn lessons about modern warfare, such as the use of drones, said Doo Jin-ho, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul.
North Korea has dispatched top military officers to Russia to monitor the war, according to South Korean and Ukrainian officials. They will collect data on “how advanced technology is being used in war, such as how AI technology is mounted on drones,” Doo said. “The North Korean officers on the ground will also learn about anti-drone systems.”
Drones have a growing profile in the arms race between North and South Korea.
In 2013, North Korea’s state-run media showed Kim watching as drones attacked mock South Korean targets. The North has since sent surveillance drones across the border, some of which flew over Seoul before returning home, according to the South Korean military.
South Korean officials have inspected drones that crashed on their side of the border and were suspected to be from the North. They said they were rudimentary, but they also warned that North Korea might use small, hard-to-detect drones as “suicide bombers,” unmanned aerial vehicles programed to blow up when they reach their targets. South Korea vowed to beef up its own drone and anti-drone capabilities, as its people were shocked that some of the North Korean drones had breached the border undetected.
During an interview last month with KBS-TV in South Korea, Shin Won-sik, the national security adviser, said that after North Korean drones crossed the border in 2022, South Korea sent its own drones north, and Pyongyang failed to detect them. Kim later fired top military officials because of that failure, Shin said.
Kim’s visit to the drone complex this week may have been meant to demonstrate the military’s drone capabilities to North Koreans after drones scattered propaganda leaflets over Pyongyang in recent weeks, said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. The North accused the South of sending those drones; South Korea said the accusation was “not worth commenting on.”