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Will the North Korean Soldiers Be Allowed Home?
North Korea sent at least 10,000 soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine. Which is fascinating, because one of two things will have to happen:
1: The soldiers, at some point, will be sent home. But they will have seen unimaginable wealth in Russia (by North Korean standards), as well as earth-shaking things like pornography. Ideas that could lead to real problems for the governing dictatorship; or
2: North Korean leaders recognize the risk and ensure that none of those soldiers ever set foot in North Korea again. One way or another:
From the West’s perspective, either is a win (though obviously #2 is more barbaric). There is precedent — Soviet leaders dealt with the same threats and issues when their citizens traveled abroad and were exposed to un-Soviet life and society.
Any predictions?
Secondarily (and said before): Ukraine makes a dandy proxy war for the West — drain vitality from Russia and North Korea? That is a big win. At this point, I’d support the US financing mercenaries to fight in Ukraine. Certainly Poland, Czechia and the Baltics should be doing it as well.
Published in General
So the West is defined as war-mongers?
That’s why the Soviets never put a man on the moon. What would they do if he refused to return?
I get very upset when I see this said. The Ukrainians are not anyone’s agents. They are fighting to keep their already hard-won independence.
We diminish the simple fact of this situation–Russia invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine–when we buy into the “proxy” argument.
You neglected to mention what we did over the course of the previous thirty years. Actions have consequences.
There are many more good questions. Some are considered here.
What is North Korea getting in return? What happens if the “elite” North Korean troops are shown to be mediocre? What happens if they win decisively? Win or lose, what happens if they are never heard from again?
No matter what we did or didn’t do, the fact remains that Putin had many choices other than war to solve his problems, and he chose to kill people and to try to take over their country by force, which in fact, didn’t solve any of his problems.
Putin is a monster. Russia is in the wrong here.
We control our choices, not his. All we needed to do was stand by our commitments.
All Putin needed to do was not kill unarmed people.
My prediction is that the story about North Korean troops in Ukraine — or Kursk, which is actually in Russia — will turn out to be false.
What North Korea gets in return is experience with contemporary warfare. Also, I suspect that the Norks are not being used as tip of the spear soldiers.
The Russian war in Ukraine started in 2014, in 2021 Russian placed troops on the northern border of Ukraine and the Russian drive to take Kiev began in 2022. The attempt to take Kiev failed. As of today, Russian forces occupy about 20% of Ukraine.
Between 2014 and 2022 Russian forces with exception of air power were involved in armored, missile, and artillery attacks against Ukrainian forces in the north.
In spite of Russian support for and from Iran IDF airpower keeps Russia from supporting Syria, and Lebanon and preventing Russian air support for Iranian proxies and Iran.
Putin should be looking for an offramp to end the Ukrainian war, a war that has added Sweden and Finland into NATO and encouraged Poland to become one of the most powerful military powers in Europe.
I have no problem with the fact that Might Makes Right is wrong, and should be opposed.
But here we are, years into this war. Going forward what is in the interest of the US, and how do we best achieve it given a cost/benefit analysis?
The fact that our enemies are combining their efforts (North Korean and Chinese joining the Russians) can and should be seen as an opportunity.
I believe we should treat it as a proxy war – one we should win, but not put American blood in the ground over. Other countries who have more to win and lose should be doing more – Poland especially.
Did we launch the “three day special military operation?”
Today is Day 1000, by the way.
The costs of the war for Russia are staggering in monetary terms. Trump has said “drill baby drill” and we will. Even though there is a delay between starting and the oil flowing, the effects on oil futures are immediate. Russia is running out of rubes from the Russian hinterlands to feed into his costly human wave assaults. Conscripting from the western parts of Russia is how the anti Afghanistan War movement got rolling in the Soviet Union.
Vladimir is sitting on the stove. Sooner or later he’s going to need to hop off.
Soviet citizens that were repatriated from the German Reich at the end of the Second World War were shipped directly to Siberia. Because they had seen too much of the West, and could not be propagandized anymore.
My parents and sisters were in a UN refugee camp in Austria. The US and UK forces began to repatriate them as per the agreement with the USSR. When the refugees learned they were going to be sent back, entire families committed suicide. It took a while for the this to register with the allies. Why would people being sent home commit suicide? Fortunately the policy was suspended before my parents turn came.
Fast forward to 1994. I was working in the ER in Sacramento On June 6 when I got a patient who was an elderly British gent. He was extremely upset to be in the ER, he had planned to be in the UK to commemorate D Day with his comrades, but had started to get sick several days earlier, and finally was dragged in by his wife.
We were watching the ceremonies, and started talking. At one point I mentioned my parents were in Germany during the war, and had been bombed by the RAF and USAF and I had ended up in the USAF. I mentioned my family was Ukrainian.
He got very quiet, and very solemn. ” I’m so sorry. We just didn’t know. We had no idea. We thought we were helping them.” When I questioned him further he explained he had ended up during the occupation helping repatriate those families, and had seen the terror among those refugees and the suicides. He still felt terrible 50 years later.
I can guarantee that any NK troops who go to Russia will end up on the Yalu River far from any NK civilians.
The conflict did not begin in February 2022 and it could have been promptly ended by America and Great Britain. It is not as if we didn’t know where our support of expanding NATO was going. That’s like saying Democrats’ governing is not responsible for increasing crime in America because they are not doing the shooting.
Maybe. But some have assumed that that is exactly their role, because Putin is running out of the type of soldiers he dares to use that way. We’ll find out quickly enough.
Of course it could have been ended in February 22, on Russia’s terms. We didn’t know when the full-scale invasion started just how badly the people of Ukraine would fight for their freedom, and they didn’t know what sort of support the US and Britain would give. But when it became clear to us and to themselves that Ukrainians had the will and the means to offer a strong resistance, and that they now had a strong, Trump-like president who would not sell out his country, it became clear that they didn’t need to accept such a “peace” deal.
I put “peace” in sneer quotes, because it wouldn’t have ended the conflict. Russia would have needed time to consolidate its influence over Ukraine’s government and foreign policy, and to find and wipe out the remaining resistance who wouldn’t accept the government’s surrender and hadn’t fled the country, just as it needed time to consolidate its wins in 2008 and 2014. But after that was done the conflict would have moved to stage 4.
As for those who think it was a mistake to allow Poland, the Baltics, and other East European countries into NATO, what ideas do they offer that would have been agreeable to those people that would have done a better job of protecting their freedom and independence? So far the people who talk that way speak with the arrogance of those who think that the fears and wishes of these people are of no importance.
Some will defend that approach: “But nukes! Russia has nukes! That makes Russia’s wishes more important!”
Do we really want to be the ones who teach Putin the lesson that nuclear blackmail is the best path to success in aggressive expansion? Is that the best path to “peace”?
I have to believe that there is porn in NK. Even if it were officially forbidden, I would expect the government to look the other way. That last thing a regime needs is restless young men seeking…release. I would think that tacitly allowing porn would fall under the “bread and circuses” section of distracting the masses. Even in the poorest and most authoritarian regimes, monkeys are gonna get spanked. Maybe that’s all you get to do for fun.
I say now that he has his tender bits caught in the wringer, we spin the crank until he promises to go back to molesting Bolshoi ballerinas.
Everybody needs a hobby, including ex-KGB war criminals.
The revisiting of the two decades of failures of the NATO nations, including America, to fulfill commitments made both when the German nation was reunited and later has been exhaustive. I will now leave resolution to the newly elected Trump Administration. Promises made.
Why do you hate Trump? People who care about him and are grateful for his work will eye his actions critically and offer advice needed for him to be successful? People who hate him will follow him blindly, without caring whether he goes off and self-destructs.
Our commitment was to a fully sovereign & independent Ukraine
You are an unending fount of Russian propaganda
Perhaps they hope for the same thing that motivates Russian volunteers (from WSJ):
Russian economist Vladislav Inozemtsev, who calculated that the family of a 35-year-old Russian soldier killed in battle would receive the equivalent of around $150,000 from his soldier salary and death compensation. That’s more than he would have earned as a civilian until age 60 in some places. These “deathonomics” payments are transforming local economies in some of Russia’s poorest regions.
I’ve been wondering how NK would handle that. Maybe the idea is that they don’t return alive. Keeping them in isolation could get expensive, unless they are put to some productive use such as digging uranium ore with their bare hands.
There are a lot of Norks who work in Russia and countries in construction and manual labor jobs, so why not as mercenaries?
It’s considered a privilege, but apparently they are under supervision 24/7 and most of their paychecks are seized and sent back to Pyongyang.
The lucky ones- the Ukrainians will plant many of them. If Vladimir will use “meat wave” tactics with Russian citizens, just imagine what he will do with North Koreans.
Interesting. I had thought that’s what Vietnamese were for.
Is there a difference between what they are supposed to recieve and what they are getting?