Russia is dropping millions on pay for up to 100,000 North Korean soldiers. They’re unlikely to see much of it.
Kim Jong Un may well pocket much of the pay his soldiers earn in Russia.
Russia is pouring cash into the deployment of up to 100,000 North Korean soldiers to help its war efforts — but the soldiers themselves are unlikely to receive any of it, according to North Korea experts.
Instead, much of the money is likely being pocketed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and those close to him.
Ukraine claims that up to 11,000 North Korean troops have been sent to help push back its forces in Kursk, and those numbers could rise.
Ukraine’s ambassador to South Korea, Dimytro Ponomarenko, told Voice of America over the weekend that the number could reach 15,000, with troops rotated out potentially every 2-3 months.
This could mean about 100,000 North Korean soldiers serving alongside Russia within a year, he said.
Anonymous sources familiar with assessments of some G20 nations also used the 100,000 figure in conversation with Bloomberg.
North Korean soldiers onscreen in South Korea.
For Russia, which South Korean intelligence estimates is paying about $2,000 a month per soldier (around $22 million for 11,000 troops), it could quickly add up.
The money would be a life-changing amount for most North Koreans. Defectors say that the average salary for workers and soldiers there is less than $1 a month, according to the Associated Press.
But there’s a catch: They’re unlikely to see much, or indeed any of it.
“I suspect that money coming from Russia is going directly to the party and then on to the Kim family,” Bruce W Bennett, a defense researcher and North Korea specialist at RAND, told B-17 by email.
Bennett cautioned that his assessment was tentative, and “based upon their organization and past behavior.”
There are many documented instances of the North Korean state keeping the earnings its citizens make abroad.
“Perhaps only a small amount or even nothing” will go to the soldiers themselves, Bennett said.
Where does the money go?
Hyunseung Lee, a former soldier who defected from North Korea in the early 2000s, also offered a bleak assessment of the rewards North Korea’s soldiers would likely get by fighting against Ukraine.
“They won’t be compensated,” he said in an interview with Radio Free Europe, adding that their families won’t be either.
RAND’s Bennett said there’s another reason soldiers may not see much of the money. “Many of the soldiers will become fatalities and unable to use any money earned,” he said, though Kim may pass some of their earnings back to their families “in lieu of the loss of their sons.”
However, the new cash flow could play an important role in North Korea, where GDP is estimated at just $40 billion.
Kim Jong Un is known for his lavish tastes. In October, South Korean lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun said that North Korea had imported luxury goods worth almost $52 million in the first eight months of 2024 alone — including cosmetics, watches, and booze, the Korea Economic Daily reported.
Yoon said that Kim gifts these luxury imports to the country’s elites to ensure their loyalty.
Kim Jong Un at a lavish banquet to celebrate North Korea’s Navy Day last year.
Carnegie Endowment Asia Program fellow Chung Min Lee wrote in April that “Kim, his family, and his closest advisers appear in public wearing very expensive watches, clothes, and handbags that are slowly becoming more available to the North Korean elite.”
But he added that loyalty had waned significantly in recent years amid international sanctions and a marked economic decline resulting from Kim’s policy of plowing up to 30% of the country’s GDP into defense.
Bennett estimates that some of the money received from Russia will go on military equipment and some on consumer goods such as food, “especially for the elites,” he said.
Indeed, some of the payment may be directly in the form of food, he said.
That’s important “because life is miserable in North Korea, creating a degree of public instability, and so Kim has tried to improve the availability of food and some other goods to avoid more open rebellion,” he said.
Meanwhile, the North Korean soldiers heading to Russia face a worrying future.
Ukraine’s allies have repeatedly said that North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine will become “cannon fodder” on the battlefield.
Reports say that North Korea is sending its “Storm Corps,” an elite special-forces unit. But Lee, the former soldier, told Radio Free Europe that “they’re totally not ready.”
He argued that the additional training they will get — reported to be just weeks, some of it done in live combat — is not enough to get familiar with the more high-tech equipment they will be expected to use.
