The West tried to make North Korea a pariah – but it's never been stronger

Telegraph

14 hours ago

Kim Jong-un sits captivated.
Leaning forward with binoculars raised, the North Korean dictator watches tanks manoeuvring over sandy terrain and troops rappelling down from helicopters.
Occasionally, he turns to one of the uniformed officers behind him to point something out or ask a question.
The scene, captured on video and shared by North Korea's state media last month, offered a rare glimpse into the secretive regime's expanding military capabilities.
The isolated country, known for its intensely authoritarian regime, boasts the world's fourth-largest military, with nearly 1.3 million troops. It also has 50 nuclear warheads, with plans to build 150 more by 2027.
A recent assessment from the US department of defence found North Korea had reached its 'strongest strategic position' in decades.
'North Korea has never been as strong – strong militarily as well as strong in oppressing its civilian population – as it is right now,' said Joanna Hosaniak, deputy director general of the Citizens' Alliance for North Korean Human Rights.
This is, in part, thanks to a new mutual defence treaty signed between North Korea and Russia in November last year.
But it is also down to its increasing ability to source foreign income through hacking and forced labour, despite Western sanctions, as it wages an information war against its enemies and its own population.
Taken together, these three factors are allowing North Korea quietly to transform itself.
Shopping for an upgrade
Since striking a deal with Russia, North Korea has supplied Moscow with 15,000 soldiers, 100 ballistic missiles and millions of munitions to help Moscow wage war against Ukraine.
In return, the Kremlin allowed Pyongyang to have its pick of sophisticated hardware – a huge boost for a regime that commands predominantly outdated, Soviet-era weaponry.
While North Korea still has a long way to go in terms of upgrading all of its inventory, the newly strengthened ties with Moscow have reinforced the regime's strength and power.
With a defence budget less than one per cent the size of China's, North Korea has had to choose between conventional and nuclear weapons.
Kim has largely sided with the nuclear program.
Earlier this year, a new intercontinental ballistic missile site was detected near Pyongyang where Kim's 'Winter Palace' once stood, marking the latest developments in the country's nuclear progress.
Expanding these capabilities has allowed North Korea to create an effective deterrent against the US, especially in case of any future conflict with South Korea, but it has done this at the expense of upgrading conventional weapons like tanks, warships and fighter jets.
'North Korea has a lot of conventional military power – lots of troops, lots of tanks, but the aircraft are 1950s era,' said Michael Cohen, an associate professor at the Australian National University.
'I suspect Tom Cruise has had more time flying them than the North Korean pilots.'
A year before Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed their defence treaty, Kim visited a rocket launch pad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in far eastern Russia.
Leonid Petrov, a leading North Korea expert and dean of the International College of Management in Australia, described the visit as a 'shopping trip' for Kim as he 'named the price for sending North Korean troops and conventional armaments' to Russia.
North Korea has since received an unspecified number of short-range air-defence systems and 'advanced electronic warfare systems including jamming equipment' from Russia since the visit, according to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.
Pyongyang has also recently shown off a number of new weapons that closely resemble Russian arms, including a supersonic cruise missile, drones, and a new fighter jet.
Satellite images have also shown a rapid expansion of North Korea's drone programme. A report from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies said that North Korea was 'likely incorporating Russian battlefield experience' as it enhanced its drone capabilities.
'North Korea is now getting unlimited access to Russian natural resources, technology, military and ideological support,' said Dr Petrov.
Bringing in cash
North Korea is subject to dozens of sanctions, imposed by the United Nations, the European Union and governments including the United Kingdom, which aim to cut off Pyongyang from the international banking system as well as arms sales.
While Russia has become an increasingly important partner in circumventing these restrictions, Pyongyang's relationship with China has also helped keep it afloat.
Beijing is believed to have provided Pyongyang with military and nuclear expertise and a huge chunk of its foreign currency.
'China has been bankrolling the North Korean regime for a long time. About 95% of North Korean trade was with China for decades,' said Dr Petrov.
Ms Hosaniak explained that North Korea is able to produce commercial goods domestically at a very cheap rate in forced labour camps, then sell them to the international market through China.
She said: 'These goods can be sold in the EU, the UK…There are no restrictions, as long as the labels say 'Made in China', although the goods were produced in North Korea.'
Companies facilitating this trade almost always need to have state backing to do so.
'In order to trade with North Korea you have to have an official North Korean trading partner so this is really a government-to-government kind of business that is operated by so-called private businesses,' Ms Hosaniak said.
Beyond commercial ties with China, the North Korean regime has also brought in cash through cyber theft, especially from overseas workers.
Local news outlet Daily NK reported that dozens of researchers from North Korea had been sent to China and Southeast Asia earlier this year to carry out attacks against cryptocurrency exchanges, engage in illegal cryptocurrency mining and target network firewalls.
Pyongyang was also revealed to be carrying out an illegal scheme known as 'laptop farming', in which dozens of laptops in the US were being remotely controlled by thousands of North Koreans using stolen identities.
Through these increasingly refined schemes, North Korean hackers have stolen an estimated $6 billion (£4.4 billion) in cryptocurrency, according to analysis firm Chainalysis.
Shattering illusions
As Kim expands his country's defence and revenue streams, he also has to contend with a population of over 25 million people.
The most effective way of doing this is to wage a full blown information war.
'The more information that North Koreans get, the more they would know that their government isn't being entirely truthful and life perhaps is better on the other side,' said Shreyas Reddy, the lead correspondent at local outlet NK News.
Before the advent of the internet, it was significantly easier to do this, but now Pyongyang has had to develop its own technology and enforce new, draconian laws.
A key way that outside information has entered the country was through USB sticks and CDs. These contain a wide variety of media, from South Korean media to much more sensitive information about human rights and politics.
The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a major blow to these efforts, as North Korea shut its borders and erected an electric fence between it and China.
A new law introduced in 2020 also increased the punishment for anyone caught consuming or sharing foreign media and in 2023, Kim outlawed common South Korean phrases and made it illegal to speak in a South Korean accent.
'Videos smuggled out of North Korea show people being punished severely for these sorts of incidents and we've heard unverified reports about executions or other permanent punishments for watching or accessing foreign culture,' said Mr Reddy.
The constant evolution of censorship and propaganda efforts have allowed Kim to retain an upper hand in the long-standing information war upon which his reign depends.
Most experts agree that North Korea will continue on the same trajectory.
Kim is only 41 years old and has put in place numerous mechanisms to ensure that his grip on power remains ironclad, while also posing a major threat to enemies abroad.
His newly cemented partnership with Russia, forged from shared isolation, is the latest of these efforts.
'Politically, economically, militarily, it makes them stronger,' said Dr Petrov.
'Both need this alliance. It's a mutually beneficial symbiosis of dictatorial regimes, which have been at war with their neighbours for many years.'