Patriot Challenge! Russia Helped North Korea Modernize Its Ballistic Missiles

North Korea has "significantly" improved its military capabilities after six months of fighting in Ukraine. According to a Ukrainian intelligence assessment provided to the Times, the North Korean military has improved the accuracy of its ballistic missiles, developed drone warfare capabilities, and accelerated the production of advanced weapons with the help of leading Russian scientists.

"Cooperation with Russia has provided North Korea with ample opportunities to modernize its armed forces, in particular, it has allowed units of the Korean People's Army to gain real experience in modern warfare, develop nuclear missile capabilities, establish production of modern weapons systems, strengthen its naval forces, and expand its intelligence-gathering capabilities," the Ukrainian GRU assessment states.

It is noted that the DPRK army is "a more serious threat to South Korea and the US troops stationed there than ever".

"Probably in "In the future, the DPRK's willingness to use military force in its foreign policy will increase. This is facilitated by the lack of a decisive reaction from the United States and its European and Asian allies to the involvement of DPRK troops in Ukraine, as well as North Korea's accession to the broader strategy of Russia and China aimed at globally exceeding US capabilities," the intelligence report emphasizes.

The report also states that at least 9,500 North Korean soldiers from four brigades participated in the war in the Kursk region of Russia. All the soldiers are from North Korea's special forces, military intelligence, or the 11th Assault Corps.

According to the intelligence report, although about 4,000 North Korean soldiers were killed or wounded during the war, they learned quickly and are now better able to hide from drone attacks and have learned to use their own drones to improve their visibility on the battlefield.

It is noted that Russia is also helping to develop and produce North Korea's nuclear-capable KN-23 ballistic missiles. When these missiles were first launched at Ukraine, they did not reach their targets by more than ten kilometers, but now they are practically indistinguishable from Russian ballistic missiles in terms of range and accuracy, a Ukrainian Air Force officer said.

He noted that these missiles were equipped with Russian guidance systems to improve their accuracy.

"The first launches of the KN-23 missed by 15 kilometers. Then they started to improve them. They installed a Russian guidance system, a positioning system similar to the one installed on the "Iskander". Then their accuracy began to reach hundreds of meters of deviation. They are still not like the "Iskander", but they are close to them. If I were South Korean, I would think long and hard about this."

Olexey Izhak, a missile technology expert at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, emphasizes that North Korean missiles are already a challenge to the US Patriot air defense system.

"With each launch, it is necessary to activate the most advanced and expensive air defense systems, so they exhaust our air defense forces. Russia expects to receive 150-200 such missiles this year," he adds.