All Episodes
Dec. 9, 2024 - Epoch Times
22:40
North Korea’s Role in Fighting the War in Ukraine: Greg Scarlatoiu
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Kim Jong-un is sending his best soldiers to the Ukrainian front.
Why?
The bottom line is money.
Greg Scarlatoiu is the new president of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and a long-time expert on the Korean Peninsula.
There is a very long history of North Korean involvement in foreign conflicts.
Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather, used to be very good at playing this game, playing mommy against daddy, the PRC, Communist China, against the Soviet Union, while extracting maximum benefits from both.
Perhaps Kim Jong-un is engaged in playing a similar game.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yan Yan Kellek.
Rex Carlatoyo, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Jan, the pleasure's all mine.
Outstanding Romanian pronunciation, by the way.
Okay, listen, but we're here to talk about North Korea, okay?
And it's very interesting.
Recently, we've been alerted to the fact that there's...
North Korean soldiers in Ukraine at the front.
And also that apparently some of them are hooked on porn.
Maybe that's like a secondary thing.
But it's almost like this is a bit of a foil to try to understand what North Korea is up to.
So tell me a little bit about these soldiers.
This is a money-making operation.
In April, Putin and Kim Jong-un entered into a mutual defense arrangement.
Basically, Kim Jong-un is making a lot of cold, hard cash out of the war in Ukraine.
He has been exporting millions of artillery shells to Russia.
Half of the artillery shells the Russians have fired over the past year have been North Korean artillery shells.
The Russian military industrial complex is still having trouble Keeping up with the demand of artillery shells on the Ukrainian front.
Now, thanks to the North Koreans, they have been able to outshell the Ukrainians 5 to 1. The Russians have been firing 10,000 artillery shells every day, while the Ukrainians have only fired 2,000.
Of course, they've also sold the KN-23 solid-fueled ballistic missile to the Russians.
It's been deployed and launched against the Ukrainians.
This is a solid-fueled ballistic missile based on a Russian, a Soviet missile, the Iskander missile.
Now, we're talking about troops.
I see the view that these troops are just cannon fodder.
They'll get slaughtered by the dozens, the hundreds, and the thousands.
I disagree.
These are special forces belonging to the 11th armed corps, the 11th corps of the KPA, the Korean People's Army.
So, under the 11th Corps, they have about 100,000 special forces.
The folks in the 11th Corps are the best trained, best fed, best disciplined, best indoctrinated soldiers that North Korea has.
Kim Jong-un is sending his best soldiers to the Ukrainian front.
Why?
The bottom line, again, is money.
The Russians are paying about $2,000 per month per soldier.
In the case of North Korean civilians, workers officially dispatched by the North Korean regime, 90% of their salary is confiscated by the regime.
In this case, it's supposed that they're left with a couple hundred dollars in their pocket every month.
I don't think so.
These are soldiers.
In uniform, perhaps the entire pay is confiscated by the regime.
Now, what about the porn story?
I don't buy into the porn story.
In the North Korean military, there are three lines of command and control.
One is military.
The other one is security agency.
North Korea's Gestapo.
Ministry of State Security, the MSS, and also the Military Security Agency, the Military Security Command.
So there is a military chain of command and control, there is a security agency chain of command and control, and of course there is a party chain of command and control, a Korean Workers' Party chain of command and control.
These soldiers We'll be under extraordinarily tight surveillance.
They have been deployed to a foreign country to the front lines fighting for Putin, Kim Jong-un's great ally, per the direct order of the Supreme Commander of the North Korean Armed Forces.
No mistakes are allowed.
Their relatives are held hostage at home.
North Korea applies a system of guilt by association called Yeonja-jae.
Up to three generations of the same family are punished, tortured, imprisoned, even executed.
If they don't do what they need to do.
If they don't do what they need to do, and if they bring shame or embarrassment to the Supreme Leader.
And this could be one such instance.
We hear stories about North Korean soldiers who may have deserted.
They may have defected.
Of course, these things happen in war.
But again, if you get caught attempting to desert, you will be killed on the spot.
Remember what Stalin used to say about the Soviet Red Army?
In the Soviet Red Army, it takes more courage to retreat than it takes to advance.
Why?
Because the commissars were watching you, they were behind you, and if you took one step back, you're basically killed by your own, by your own commissars.
The North Koreans are not very different.
How do you know that this is the elite force, out of curiosity, and not this, you know, so-called cannon fodder, as some have described?
Because these are soldiers often referred to as light infantry brigades.
They're North Korea Special Forces under the 11th Corps.
They are trained in the use of all accessible small arms.
They're jump trained.
They're trained in martial arts.
They're the special forces of North Korea trained to infiltrate behind enemy lines, go after supply lines, cover the retreat of their own forces, destroy infrastructure, blow up bridges.
Now, of course, there are some questions to ask.
We don't really know the answers yet.
Only time will tell.
Is language a problem?
Are they able to communicate in Russian?
Do they fight as North Korean units or are the North Korean fighters embedded into Russian units?
Are they used as special forces, as commando units?
That's what they've been trained to do.
Are they capable of engaging in combined arms operations, combining artillery, drones and infantry?
We don't have the answers to those questions yet, but I do know 100% for sure that they're highly trained, highly disciplined, very well fed, and highly indoctrinated, plus their families are held hostage at home.
So there are a lot of incentives to be Kim Jong-un's best warfighters.
The thing I'm trying to understand is, does North Korea ever deploy these kind of lower level cannon fodder type infantry or is it always these superior fighting forces that you're describing?
It's always the superior fighting forces.
A few examples.
They sent pilots to fight alongside the Syrians in 1967. They flew against Israel in the Six-Day War.
They took heavy casualties.
In 1973, they flew alongside Egyptian pilots again against Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
Again, they took casualties.
In Vietnam, they dispatched North Korean pilots to the Vietnam War to fly missions against us, the United States.
They lost 16 planes.
In 1983, Robert Mugabe's 5th Brigade committed an atrocity.
The Matabeleland massacre.
They killed 20,000 civilians.
Those Zimbabwean troops had been trained by North Korean special forces.
After Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia, what happened was the Ethiopian-Eritrean War in the late 1990s.
The North Koreans had troops, tanks and tank crews fighting on the Ethiopian side.
As recently as the Syrian civil war, they had special forces fighting alongside Assad's troops.
They were building a nuclear reactor for Assad in Syria when the Australian Air Force bombed the reactor in 2007. Assad didn't go to the UN to complain.
They brought in bulldozers.
They raised the whole place.
It was gone.
Of course, they've been proliferating instability and violence to the Middle East, to Iran, and Iran's terrorist proxies.
Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
All of this proliferation of instability and violence has been directed at our greatest ally and only ally in the Middle East, the state of Israel.
So there is a very long history of North Korean involvement in foreign conflicts.
And when it came down to dispatching troops, they didn't send cannon fodder.
They sent their best troops, generally special forces.
Speaking of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict now in Lebanon, these tunnels, as I understand it, that they're systematically blowing up sections of, those were actually built by North Koreans.
That was an astonishing thing for me to learn.
Affirmative.
The North Koreans built tunnels for both Hamas in Gaza and for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Why are they so good at tunneling?
Because there's a lot of stuff underground in North Korea.
There are a lot of tunnels in underground facilities in North Korea.
They're very good at tunneling.
This is one of their specialties and they have proliferated this tunneling expertise to the Middle East, to the enemies of Israel.
Greg, we're going to take a quick break right now and we'll be right back.
And we're back with Greg Scarlatoiu, President and CEO of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.
I've heard from many experts that essentially if Chinese material support to North Korea ended It just kind of evaporated.
The North Korean regime might collapse within weeks.
I'm curious what your view of that is, because on the one hand, we have this huge money-making operation through weapons, through soldiers, and so forth.
You're arguing this is part of its economic engine.
On the other hand, There's this significant dependency on Chinese money, and the argument is that the Chinese Communist Party basically gets to say, well, look at this pariah regime, look at the terrible things we do, we're much better than them, or something like that.
Your thoughts?
To China, North Korea continues to be a vassal, an ally, a vassal, a buffer zone between South Korea, a friend and ally of the United States and China, and also bargaining chip.
There have been ups and downs.
And the relationship between China and North Korea, China has sometimes been extraordinarily annoyed with North Korea.
Even nowadays, when Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping met in China, Kim Jong-un pledged to consult with China when it came to important strategic decisions.
Apparently he didn't consult with China prior to launching the so-called satellite, and he didn't consult with China properly prior to providing ammunition, artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and even troops to Russia.
Now, is this a deal breaker?
Absolutely not.
It's just like the nasty boy who goes to school, does some nasty things, North Korea, and the principal calls the parents to come to school.
This is China.
You know, the kid might get slapped around a little bit, get a little bit of a spanking, but fundamentally, he's still their kid.
So this is not going to be a deal-breaker.
Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather, used to be very good at playing this game, playing mommy against daddy, the PRC, Communist China, against the Soviet Union, while extracting maximum benefits from both.
Perhaps Kim Jong-un is engaged in playing a similar game.
What do you make of Trump 45's relationship with Kim Jong-un?
Multiple U.S. presidential administrations have attempted to engage the North Koreans, to engage in diplomatic dialogue with the North Koreans.
All of these attempts have failed.
I would not blame us, the United States.
I will blame the North Korean regime for having zero credibility, for having breached Each and every promise they made through a negotiated deal.
During the Clinton administration, there was the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework.
They developed a clandestine uranium enrichment program that fell apart.
During the Bush administration, we had the six party talks.
They breached the terms of the agreement.
It fell apart.
The 2012 Leap Day Agreement, Ambassador Glyn Davis here, a former special envoy for North Korea policy, the first vice-minister of foreign affairs at the time, Kim Kaeguan, no more nukes, no more tests, no more ballistic missile launches.
Two weeks later, they announced a so-called satellite launch.
They proceeded with the launch just ahead of the centennial anniversary of Kim Il-sung's birthday on the 15th of April.
2012, the launch happened two days before that.
They failed then.
They succeeded later.
So, President Trump tried something new.
President Trump experimented with a tool in the diplomatic toolkit that had not been employed before, the summit meeting.
It makes good logical sense.
If this is a top-down system with a supreme leader at the top, What else can we try?
A summit meeting, a meeting between the two leaders.
After all, during Trump 45, we applied all four elements of national power.
All four elements of the dime.
Diplomatic, information, military and economic power.
How?
Diplomatic through the summit meetings in Hanoi, Vietnam, in Singapore and then in Hanoi, and then very briefly in Panmunjom on the Korean Peninsula.
We applied information to a certain extent through information campaigns, information sent into North Korea through funding organization endeavoring to do that.
Military power, of course, through strengthening the U.S.-South Korea alliance and the U.S.-Japan alliance, and economic through sanctions.
So this was part of that.
In my view, perhaps, for President Trump, this is still unfinished business.
Perhaps there will be some way to try once again to solve Let's say it, one of the most serious security threats facing the United States and our allies.
I talked to a lot of members of the European Parliament.
My organization and I have built a lot of great transatlantic bridges.
The Europeans are very worried.
You know, we've been talking about nukes and missiles and human rights violations.
Of course, they care.
This issue is somehow remote.
They're no longer remote.
The North Korean threat has arrived on the doorstep of Europe.
There are troops in Ukraine.
Everybody realizes the urgency of this matter.
So while this is difficult, the greatest difficulty is the following.
When we go to school and study our conflict resolution, we learn about the Zopa, the zone of possible agreement.
We learn about the BATNA, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
The North Koreans don't go to the school of the Zopa or the BATNA. The North Koreans go to the school of the zero-sum game.
Your loss is my gain.
What do they want?
They want the so-called denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula.
There have been no nuclear weapons in South Korea since 1991-1992.
The tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea were removed at that time.
What they mean by this is the removal of South Korea from the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella, the dismantlement of the U.S.-South Korea Strategic Alliance.
So, what do we want?
We want CVID. Complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization.
Where's the middle ground?
There's no middle ground.
There's no ZOPA. There's no zone of possible agreement.
Where does human rights fall into this?
Well, you know, there were some very high points during Trump 45. For example, and I had a hand in this.
I'm the one who selected, recruited, and brought Chisong over to participate in the State of the Union Address.
So we had a disabled North Korean human rights activist, a former North Korean defector, participating in the State of the Union Address, meeting with the President in the Oval Office together with seven others.
I selected and recruited those seven others as well, good friends and colleagues.
President Trump gave a great speech on the 7th of November 2017 in Seoul before the South Korean National Assembly.
He made a very accurate statement on the state of North Korean human rights and the human rights security nexus.
Of course, later on, As we were engaging the North Koreans in summer diplomacy, he was criticized, for example, for not having appointed a U.S. special envoy on North Korean human rights issues.
I agree that perhaps we had and perhaps we still have too many special envoys, but this position is one that we really need.
It's a position that we need.
It's a position that needs full support.
So that's what you're hoping for in this future administration?
That's what I'm hoping for, yes.
And, of course, the UN is no silver bullet.
The UN has severe limitations.
And yet, there were some good things done through the UN at the time.
Trump 45, the first Trump administration, was somehow...
Reluctant to place the North Korean human rights issue on the agenda of the UN Security Council for a few years, presumably because we were engaging them through summer diplomacy.
But no empty promises were made.
There was no arrangement bringing any kind of damage to U.S. national security or to the peace and security of the Northeast Asia region or South Korea.
So, we'll have to see, I mean, fundamentally over the long run, we'll have to keep doing what we've been doing, basically ensure deterrence.
Deterrence is very important and, of course, extended deterrence.
And the presence of U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula in South Korea is very important.
South Koreans are great soldiers, great warfighters.
The presence of our armed forces, the presence of U.S. forces Korea and South Korea is important because it provides a very powerful deterrent.
It's not about fighting a war.
It's about preventing a war.
And that's the very important role played by the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
So we'll have to continue to deter and contain North Korea.
They have developed tremendous, I have to say, long-range ballistic missile capabilities.
By now we are certain that they can reach the continental United States.
According to the RAND Corporation, by the year 2025, which is upon us, they'll be in possession of 200 nuclear warheads.
That's an arsenal compared to Great Britain's and France's.
And France and Great Britain are no longer...
Building nuclear weapons.
So, of course, we'll have to work on improving our own missile defenses as well.
In the meantime, we will have to concentrate on the human rights security nexus.
And again, concentrate on very meaningful and effective information campaigns meant to empower the people of North Korea through information from the outside world meant to induce eventual peaceful transformation of North Korea.
Well, Greg Skarlatoiu, such a pleasure to have had you on.
Sir, Jan, the pleasure has been all mine.
Thank you.
Thank you all for joining Greg Skarlatoiu and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
Export Selection