Cooperation with Russia has strengthened North Korea economically, militarily and strategically, says Ulrika Bergsten, an SVT foreign reporter and former Asia correspondent. “North Korea does not need the rest of the world in the same way now that it has Russia.” That is a press analysis, not an official Pyongyang balance sheet.

In late September Kyiv said Pyongyang was preparing a new wave of soldiers for Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke of another 10,000. RFE/RL: on 29 September Zelenskyy wrote that more than 8,000 North Koreans were still on Russian territory — troops brought in from 2024 against the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk — and that another 10,000 were being selected and trained. Moscow has not confirmed the new figure. Putin, in the same stretch, dismissed talk of a domestic Russian mobilisation as “utter nonsense,” though he signed a decree lifting the army to 1,550,500 personnel, plus 15,500.

SVT says Pyongyang continues to send ammunition and ballistic missiles. South Korean assessments, cited by Yonhap in March, spoke of some 33,000 containers of military supplies to Russia, possibly more than 15 million 152 mm shells. Those numbers are intelligence estimates, not a public Russian inventory.

The swap, in SVT’s reading, is lucrative for Pyongyang: money, experience of modern war, a stronger strategic position. The Diplomat wrote in September that Russia may have passed drone technology, including on the Shahed line. That remains a risk assessment, not a public contract.

In the week of the SVT piece, North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile the regime describes as fitted with AI technology and as a “great success.” That is Pyongyang’s version. Bergsten also appears in SVT Play’s “Så tjänar Nordkorea på Putins krig.”

Troops, shells and missiles are, where relevant, claims from Kyiv, Seoul or reporters. They are not verdicts and they are not figures admitted by Moscow.

Image: Kristoferb, morning in Pyongyang, 4 April 2013, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. A city view, not a battlefield.

Sources consulted: Samarbetet med Ryssland har gjort Nordkorea mycket starkare — SVT Nyheter; Zelenskyy Warns Of New Russian Mobilization, 10,000 North Korean Troop Deployment — RFE/RL.