Team Beal - - - -At the beginning of World War I, when the British Expeditionary Force in France was being battered by the advancing German army there was great anxiety in Britain. Then the Russians magically came to the rescue.
…a ‘Great Rumour’ spread across the United Kingdom that Russian troops had landed in Scotland on their way to the Western Front. At one of the tensest periods of the early fighting, mysterious trains were allegedly passing through English villages carrying hordes of between 10,000 to 250,000 Russians to join their British and French comrades in fighting the Germans. The cargo was identified owing to foreign accents, grey uniforms, long, shaggy beards, and above all ‘snow on their boots’, despite it being late summer.
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[There were] fifty-seven cases where people believed they had actually seen the Russians themselves.
The British government was happy to have the rumour flourish because it boosted morale and it was not officially denied until 15 September 1914, when news from the front become more palatable.
The Great Rumour of a Russian expeditionary force ‘with snow on their boots’ has an uncanny resemblance in some respects to current reports that North Korea troops are battling the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) in Russia’s Kursk oblast. Both stories are implausible and lacking any substantiated evidence. They both illustrate the propensity of people to ‘believe the unbelievable’, as the social historian Catriona Pennell puts it, in times of social stress. The big difference is that while the Great Rumour was condoned and exploited by the government it was, according to Pennell, a case of spontaneous combustion akin to religious apparitions, whereas the North Korean myth, to coin a convenient phrase, has been created and disseminated by governments – initially the Ukrainian, then the South Korea and finally the US. They each have their specific trajectories and motives, some of which are more straightforward than others.
The story of the North Korean troops can reasonably be described as a myth because the central claim that Kim Jong Un is coming to the aid of a desperate Vladimer Putin by sending troops to Kursk to fight the UAF and that this represents a threat not merely to Ukraine but NATO, on both sides of the Atlantic, is more fantasy than fact. It is very likely that there are North Korean troops in Russia, in various places, doing various things – training, liaison, systems maintenance, etc. – but to call this an escalation that represents the entry of a third state into the conflict is misleading because this has always been a war between Russia and NATO with Ukraine merely being the disposable tip of the essentially American spear. It is a mythical threat contrived to draw NATO into direct, rather than proxy war with Russia.
Not that there have not been numerous attempts to provide ‘evidence’ to give flesh to the myth, much of it quite risible and causing embarrassment to the professionals. For instance, NK News, a leading Western anti-North Korea news outlet, has bewailed How North Korea’s troop deployment to Russia has triggered a rash of fake news. Apart from faked stories showing dead or wounded ‘North Korean soldiers’, NK News mentioned social media posts which purported to show Russians sampling North Korean dogmeat. However, North and South use different terms for dogmeat, and the can shown in photos was South Korean. Fake news can be a tricky business.
The Seoul newspaper Hankyoreh reported how South Korean intelligence – no stranger to fabricating news itself – was becoming increasingly annoyed at the ineptness of Ukrainian propaganda, in particular a story how 40 North Koreans had been killed in battle, before Zelensky claimed that they had even entered combat. Given that South Korean intelligence has been the main public source purporting to show North Korea troops being sent to Kursk one can empathise with their concern about damage to the credibility of the narrative.
The absence of evidence of North Korean involvement has been cleverly obscured by the media describing the endorsement of an allegation as ‘confirmation’. For example, this from the Brookings Institution:
In early October, Ukrainian intelligence reported that several thousand North Korean soldiers were undergoing training in Russia in preparation for deployment to the Ukrainian front line later this year. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) later corroborated Ukraine’s assertions, sharing satellite images of Russian vessels transporting the first batch of 1,500 North Korean special forces to Russia’s Far East. On October 23, White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby confirmed the presence of at least 3,000 soldiers. The Pentagon now believes that 10,000 North Korean troops are in Russia with a contingent heading toward the Kursk region in western Russia to battle Ukrainian forces.[emphasis added]
Reported, corroborated, confirmed, believes – a variety of words to disguise the fact that no evidence is being presented.
What would real evidence look like? The Hankyoreh makes a reasonable stab at it:
People who have experience in gathering military intelligence say that when it comes to reports about North Korean soldiers fighting in Ukraine, it’s only when Russian and North Korean authorities officially confirm them that we can accept them as fact.
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[Other evidence would be] If troops at the company or battalion level or higher participate in the fighting and the identities of North Korean troops are confirmed among the dead; if a North Korean prisoner of war directly testifies about North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine; if North Korean military documents containing operational orders, combat orders, or tactical training plans are confiscated; or if wiretaps containing confirmation about North Korean troops in combat are leaked.
However, in the likely absence of neutral observers any such reports from the Ukrainian government would lack forensic credibility.
There have been conflicting claims about the number of troops and their whereabouts, with the US often saying it cannot ‘confirm’ Ukrainian assertions. Then on 7 November it was reported that Seoul says North Korean troops have not entered combat, refuting claim by Zelenskyy. To compound matters, the New York Times had previously said that the US government had accepted the Zelensky claim, and that a US official said there had been significant North Korean casualties, although the location of the incident was unknown.
And always there is no meaningful evidence. The South Koreans provide commercial satellite photographs of warehouses claiming that they house North Korean troops without explaining how they know that, or indeed, why the Americans don’t. The Americans claim there are 3,000, 4,000, 10,000 North Korean troops – the numbers vary – here and there in Russia – first in the east then in the west, in Kursk, doing training, or suffering casualties in battle, without giving any indication how they might know. SIGINT (interception of communications), HUMINT (spies on the ground), satellite imagery, a stiff bourbon while recalling memories of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and links with Al Qaeda- who knows?
So it looks as if we must accept that we will not see much in the way of credible evidence and we must turn to the assessment of plausibility.
Many people argue that the Russian are struggling to make progress, are facing unacceptably high casualties and so are turning to North Korea out of desperation. For instance, Kori Schake of the American Enterprise Institute claims that North Korea Joining Russia’s War Is a Sign of Weakness and argues that Washington should take advantage of ‘Moscow’s faltering prospects’ by upping aid to Ukraine, There are a number of problems with this, but two stand out.
Russia is not faltering and does not need foreign troops. It is slowly and methodically demolishing the UAF, focussing on attrition – destroying the enemy whilst husbanding resources and keeping its casualties as low as possible – rather than taking territory; Ukraine is now struggling to survive, not to win. This is especially so in Kursk where the Ukrainians are not fighting from defensive positions built up over the last decade, as in the Donbass, but above ground where they are vulnerable to Russian firepower.
There are huge problems integrating foreign troops in the modern net-centric battlespace, where so much depends on drones, glide bombs, and targeting artillery, which in turn requires communication between units. This is no easy business as the US, which has the largest empire in history, knows full well and that is why it has innumerable military exercises with vassal militaries around the world, sometimes bilateral but often multilateral, to achieve ‘interoperability’.
From the Russian point of view, a large contingent of North Korean soldiers, not speaking Russian and not familiar with the technologies and command structures, would be more trouble than it was worth. The Korean People’s Army (KPA) would find the battle experience useful, but this would be a minor benefit in the circumstances.
As investigative journalist Seymour Hersh would say none of this passes the smell test.
But if there are no good reasons at the moment why Russia would bring in large numbers of North Korean troops to fight in Kursk, what about motives on the other side to construct such a myth?
The Zelensky government has far and away the strongest motive. As its military buckles under the Russia onslaught, and its society and economy are in desperate straits, it considers direct US military intervention as the only possible solution and sees the ‘North Korean threat’ as a strong card – Ukraine’s Zelenskyy urges allies to act before North Korean troops reach the front. The primary ‘act’ that Zelensky wants is authorisation to use NATO-supplied missiles to strike deep into Russia. This would have less military significance than political because these weapons require NATO targeting and operational involvement which Putin has warned would trigger a Russian response which would escalate into direct war.
The hapless Mark Rutte, fresh in the job as NATO Secretary-General just at the time when Trump’s victory threatens him with a status and salary cut, echoes the call: Rutte’s message to Trump: North Korean troops in Ukraine war threaten the US too.
South Korea Korea’s role has been more difficult to pin down. Despite the economic and strategic danger of alienating Russia, the Yoon Seok-yeol administration quickly jumped on the bandwagon, providing much of the ‘intelligence’ behind the narrative. There were even rumours of dispatching F-16s, with pilots, to Ukraine. This may have been due to the desire to cosy even closer to Washington; Yoon is a very unpopular president, with approval ratings now at 17%, and presumably feels US support essential. There were also business opportunities for South Korea’s burgeoning military-industrial complex, with air defence being high on the Ukrainian wish-list. However, with Trump#2 now looming the situation changes. It is presumed that Trump will want to disengage from Ukraine, so promulgating war scares would no longer be welcome to him, and US aid for Ukraine to buy South Korean armaments would dry up. Hence, perhaps the contradicting of Zelensky’s claim about North Korean troops in combat.
Needless to say, it is the US response which is easily the most significant. Whilst US spokespersons have not directly contradicted anything that Ukraine (or South Korea) has claimed about North Korean troops, they have been less than enthusiastic in endorsing them. Often, they would come up with statements which were vague, and, importantly, not disprovable; the statement that there are 10,000 North Korean troops in Russia is not subject to be disproved. The Hankyoreh, in an article entitled US and others say they ‘can’t confirm’ North Korean troop deployment — but why? addressed the issue of US reluctance:
Some observers say that US authorities are refraining from confirming the dispatches of North Korean troops because of the news’ potential to impact the presidential election next month. If North Korea’s direct involvement in the war is officially confirmed, then there could be increased pressure on the US and NATO to respond accordingly.
We are now entering an interregnum – the gap between Trump’s victory and his inauguration when the Biden administration is still in office. We can expect Zelensky to double down on his effort to draw the US directly into the war, and the ‘North Korea troops’ myth may remain a strong card. However, it is unlikely that the Biden administration will take the bait. It has resisted so far -with the Pentagon surely conscious of the danger to America, advocating caution – and is unlikely to plunge the US into a devastating, perhaps catastrophic war with Russia towards the end of its term where it would bear responsibility for defeat but not plaudits for victory in the unlikely event that came to pass. It will, however, keep the war going so that the collapse of the Ukraine adventure happens in Trump’s watch.
Meanwhile, just as there were eye-witness accounts of those mythical Russians in 1914, now scared and obsessed Ukrainians soldiers are seeing North Koreans disguised as Buryats, a Mongol people from Siberia who have a contingent in the Russian army serving in Kursk. In time it is probable that those North Korean troops, threatening not merely Europe but the US itself will fade into obscurity like those Russian soldiers marching through England with snow on their boots. As the historical circumstances that generated it change, so the myth may wither and die.
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