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A satellite image released by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service on Oct. 18, 2024, showing what it said was a Russian warship in North Korea’s Chongjin Port on Oct. 12. (courtesy of NIS)

South Korea’s presidential office mentioned the possibility of providing offensive weapons to Ukraine on Tuesday while emphasizing a robust response to North Korean troops being deployed to Russia. But the White House only said it would provide more information in coming days without actually confirming the troop deployment.

The presidential office reiterated on Tuesday that Seoul would “work closely with our friends and allies,” but the US and the UK maintain the North Korean troop deployment is unconfirmed.

The two countries are both friends of South Korea and are playing a critical role in Ukraine’s defense against Russia, which raises the question of why they have not immediately confirmed the North Korean troop deployment. The likely explanation is that they are still assessing intelligence on the matter.

The work of intelligence agencies proceeds similarly, whether in Korea or other countries. Agencies first collect various information (unprocessed data gathered from various sources for intelligence purposes) and then prepare, assess and interpret that information to produce intelligence (knowledge gained as a product of gathering, processing, assessing and interpreting workable information). Subsequently, a range of intelligence is collated, merged and assessed to finally determine the truth and accuracy of a given issue.

The Kyiv Post, an English-language newspaper in Ukraine, reported on Oct. 4 that six North Korean soldiers were killed on the front in a Ukrainian missile attack. Then Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed in a speech on Oct. 13 that North Korea is providing not only weapons but also troops to Russia.

Until the middle of last week, South Korea remained noncommittal about these claims of North Korean troops being deployed to Ukraine.

“As of the present, we’re still looking into reports about the possibility of civilian support,” Vice Defense Minister Kim Seon-ho said on Thursday in relation to Ukraine’s allegations about North Korea deploying troops to support the Russian war effort. Kim made the comments while attending an allies and partners meeting on the sidelines of a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Belgium.

“We think there’s a possibility that [North Korea] has provided not troops but manpower, which we see as significant,” Kim told a reporter from Yonhap News during an interview at NATO headquarters on the same day.

“Once we’ve collated and assessed more information, we’ll learn [the truth about] whether we’re dealing with manpower or troops,” Kim added.

A graphic released by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service on Oct. 18, 2024, depicting what it said were the routes taken by Russian cargo ships to between Vladivostok (top right blue dot) and North Korea’s Chongjin (middle), and Hamheung (bottom) transporting North Korean soldiers. (courtesy of NIS)

But the very next day, South Korea’s Defense Ministry changed its position about the kind of personnel North Korea was providing.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) published a press release on Friday afternoon confirming that North Korean special forces are taking part in Russia’s war with Ukraine.

“While closely monitoring the movements of the North Korean military, we detected North Korean special forces being transported to Russia on Russian naval transports from Oct. 8 to 13. That is confirmation that the North Korean military has joined the fighting,” the NIS said.

“The North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia are currently stationed with a number of Russian military units spread throughout areas of the Russian Far East, including Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk. As soon as their acclimatization drills are complete, they are likely to be sent to the front,” the NIS explained.

The transportation of North Korean special forces to Russia, which the NIS provided as grounds for confirming the North Korean military’s entrance into the war, took place on Oct. 8-13. Even though Kim Seon-ho was probably aware of that when he spoke with the Yonhap News reporter on Oct. 17, he mentioned the “possibility that [North Korea] has provided not troops but manpower.”

Seoul hasn’t explained why the NIS and the Defense Ministry, the primary organizations in charge of collecting intelligence on North Korea, would have offered conflicting intelligence assessments just one day apart.

The NIS released three satellite images about the activity of Russian ships transporting North Korean troops as evidence for its Friday press release.

But the NIS has no independent means of acquiring satellite images that are more credible than those available to the Defense Ministry. The fact is that the NIS has access to images that have been taken by US spy satellites and spy planes, sent to the Korea Defense Intelligence Command and the ROK/US Combined Forces Command, and then analyzed and deciphered by US Forces Korea and image analysts from the South Korean military.

Considering that the NIS said North Korean troops are stationed with Russian units and will be sent to the front following acclimatization drills, it would seem that the question of whether North Korean troops have actually joined the fighting will have to wait until they’re actually transported to the front in Ukraine, which is thousands of kilometers from their current location in Vladivostok and other parts of the Russian Far East.

The evidence presented by the NIS seems to establish that North Korean troops have indeed been sent to Russia, but the claim about their likely deployment to the front remains a prediction about something that is yet to come. Based on the spy agency’s press release, in other words, the troops’ presence in Russia is a fact, while their deployment to the war is still an opinion. So the press release “confirming” North Korean troops’ engagement in hostilities would appear to be a mixture of fact and opinion.

By Kwon Hyuk-chul, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]