As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds through its fifth year, North Korea has become one of its most profitable backers. South Korean government-funded think tanks have estimated that Kim Jong-un’s regime has earned between US$13 billion and roughly $20 billion since August 2023 by supplying troops, artillery shells, ballistic missiles and military engineers to Moscow's war effort.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed late last month that Russia had been preparing facilities in its Voronezh region since June to receive an additional 30,000 North Korean troops, and said Pyongyang was also planning to send more missile launchers to support Moscow’s campaign.
Oh Gyeong-seob, a North Korea specialist and senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told SCMP the reported plan “would be a win-win deal for both countries”, noting that a steady supply of frontline North Korean soldiers gives Russia a cost-effective way to replenish its ranks without another domestic mobilisation, while Pyongyang collects money and military technology in return.
An estimated 14,000 North Korean soldiers and thousands of military engineers were first sent to Russia’s Kursk region in late 2024 to help repel a Ukrainian incursion, a deployment Pyongyang confirmed in April 2025. Large-scale troop rotations have followed in at least three further phases since – in January, August, and September-to-December 2025 – Korea Herald reported, citing South Korean intelligence authorities, bringing total personnel dispatched to more than 20,000.
That commitment has come at a steep human cost. Ukraine’s military estimates put total dead and wounded among the roughly 11,000 troops sent to Kursk at 5,000 to 6,000, according to figures Kyiv Independent cited from the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) April 2025 report, while a separate South Korean intelligence estimate reported by in May put North Korean casualties through February at 6,000 killed or wounded. Pyongyang, too, has not hidden the toll: during an April 2026 visit by Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, North Korea inaugurated a museum dedicated to soldiers killed in the fighting.
Counting the Billions
Quantifying North Korea’s earnings is difficult because most compensation flows not as cash but as weapons technology and other in-kind assistance, so estimates vary by institution and by what each one counts.
Im Soo-ho, a researcher at South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy, wrote in a March 2026 report that Pyongyang earned between $7.67 billion and $14.4 billion in hard currency value from troop deployments and arms exports between August 2023 and December 2025, warning that if North Korea “fully collects payment for its troop deployments and arms exports”, the sanctions-driven reduction in its hard currency earnings “is expected to be undermined”. The Korea Herald added, citing the same institute, that Russia has paid North Korea for troop deployments since October 2024, though actual cash compensation secured by Pyongyang "appears to be limited”.
A separate Nikkei Asia report, citing South Korean intelligence, put North Korean arms shipments alone at $7 billion to $13.8 billion through 2025, and said Russia had paid more than $600 million specifically for the troop deployments to Kursk since late 2024.
An earlier, April 2025 report from KIDA put the figure higher still, at roughly $20 billion – $19.2 billion from arms and ammunition, $630 million from technology transfers, and $280 million from the troop deployments, according to figures AsiaNews reported. Park Yong-han, the KIDA senior researcher who authored that report, said “Russia-North Korea military cooperation raises the possibility of Russian intervention in a Korean contingency and helps sustain the Kim regime during periods of regional instability”, according to AsiaNews.
That KIDA assessment is bolstered by open-source satellite research from Reuters and the Open Source Centre tracked more than 15,800 containers of North Korean munitions shipped to Russia between August 2023 and March 2025 – likely representing between 4.2 million and 5.8 million individual rounds of ammunition, delivered across 64 voyages by four Russian vessels. North Korean shells now supply roughly half of Russia’s artillery needs in Ukraine, with some frontline units reported to rely on them entirely.
A more recent estimate compiled by Bloomberg Economics, breaks the total down further: about $9.12 billion from artillery shells, $2.38 billion from heavier artillery, $1.27 billion from ballistic missiles, and $849 million from troop deployments – putting North Korea’s total foreign exchange earnings from all sources, including the Russia trade, at up to $22 billion between 2022 and 2025.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has described North Korea as a “partner” and said that the mutual-defense treaty the two countries signed in 2024 remains in force, adding that Putin has suggested Pyongyang could eventually take part in negotiations to end the war.
Strategic Risks Beyond the Balance Sheet
Park Yong-han's KIDA report also warned that the international community should work to end the Russia-Ukraine war and pursue diplomatic and deterrence measures to defuse further military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang. North Korea and Russia have repeatedly denied Pyongyang’s direct military involvement in Ukraine, even as both governments publicly reaffirm their right to bilateral defense cooperation under the treaty signed in June 2024 and ratified that November.
For now, the arrangement continues to expand. With a reported 30,000 additional North Korean troops potentially headed toward Voronezh, and munitions shipments still running at scale, Kim Jong-un’s government has built what several South Korean research institutes independently describe as the largest foreign-exchange windfall it has secured since international sanctions began constraining its economy.