<p >Tens of thousands of North Korean industrial workers are being dispatched to Russia to support the local defence sector’s ability to produce modern military drones, as part of expanding defence cooperation between the two states. According to “diplomatic sources in the West and Russia” cited by Japan’s NKH news outlet, “a total of 25,000 workers from North Korea are to be dispatched” to the “Russian Shahed factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone of the central Russian republic of Tatarstan,” with the intention of increasing production. Although reports on North Korea by the source and similar Japanese and South Korean outlets have often proven far from reliable, the dispatch of North Korean workers to support Russia’s defence sector has long been considered likely by analysts, and corroborates reports from Ukrainian intelligence officials to this effect. North Korea retains a sizeable industrial workforce with high levels of technical education, and would benefit from remittances to its economy, from knowhow from Russian production lines, and on a geopolitical level from bolstering its neighbour’s military capabilities against <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/mattis-you-re-going-to-incinerate-a-couple-million-people-america-s-insane-plan-to-drop-80-nuclear-bombs-on-north-korea" target="_blank">common adversaries</a> in the Western world. </p><p ><img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/06/21/article_68560b08b924d1_54183742.jpeg" title="Shahed 136 Drone"></p><p >Russia’s defence sector has since mid-2022 considerably <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/expanded-production-russia-massive-strikes-output" >expanded its capacity</a> to produce single use attack drones, after first establishing this capability with Iranian support to manufacture the Shahed 136 under license. In May The Economist revealed that output of Shahed 136 drones had<a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/capacity-500-shahed-attacks-russia-expanding-production" > increased more than tenfold</a> from 300 a month, to over 100 per day, with Russian industry remaining on track to be able to produce up to 500 of the aircraft per day. This would allow for strikes using over 1000 of the aircraft to be launched several times per week. Successful expansion of drone production mirrors the efforts made across multiple areas of the defence sector to increase output to several times pre-2022 levels, with annual output of Iskander-M ballistic missile systems and Kh-101 cruise missiles today being <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russia-expanded-production-iskander-sustain" target="_blank">several times as high </a>as they were three years ago, while production of Su-34 strike fighters has <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russian-doubled-su34-production" >more than doubled</a>, and output of T-90M tanks <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russia-tripled-production-t90m-keep-up-wartime-attrition" >has tripled</a>. Not only did Russia’s defence sector contract to a small fraction of its Soviet era size in the 1990s, from which it is still very far from recovering, but technical education levels in the country also declined significantly, causing difficulties for the defence sector in the following decades. This has made inputs from the North Korean workforce, which avoided a comparable decline in standards, highly valued. It is expected that North Korean experts will play a much wider role in the Russian defence sector beyond drone production lines. </p><p ><img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/06/21/article_68560b5e21acc5_12134128.jpg" title="Korean People`s Army Personnel in the Russian Kursk Region "></p><p ></p><p >The report of North Korean workers being dispatched to support Russian drone production closely coincides with the <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/nkorea-bolstering-russia-kursk-engineers-mine" target="_blank">revelation</a> by Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu that the Korean People’s Army is set to dispatch 1000 mine clearance experts and 5000 military engineers to support de-mining and reconstruction efforts in the Russian Kursk region, following the routing of the last Ukrainian forces there in April. Shoigu has made increasingly frequent visits to North Korea, as the country’s importance to Russian security interests has <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russia-redeploys-50000-kharkov-kursk" >continued to grow</a>, stating that such visits were necessary to oversee “the intensive pace of the implementation” of the two countries’ strategic partnership agreement. North Korea  emerged as by far the <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russian-army-units-training-nkorean-140mm-mortars" >greatest foreign arms supplier </a>to the Russian Armed Forces, with its equipment prized not only for its <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/nkorean-bulsae4-antitank-takes-out-ukraine-artillery-kursk" >advanced capabilities</a>, but also for the sheer quantities available. The country’s production capacities for several kinds of armaments closely matched or exceeded those seen in Russia, despite the discrepancy in the size of the two countries’ populations and economies. Beyond this support, unprecedented <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russia-details-nkorea-role-repelling-kursk" >North Korean personnel deployments</a> to the Russian Kursk region for the first time placed the Korean People’s Army on the frontlines of a European conflict, where they have played a major role in repelling an incursion by both Ukrainian forces and contractor personnel from a <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/contractors-kursk-polish-french-details" >number of NATO members</a>.</p>

<p >Tens of thousands of North Korean industrial workers are being dispatched to Russia to support the local defence sector’s ability to produce modern military drones, as part of expanding defence cooperation between the two states. According to “diplomatic sources in the West and Russia” cited by Japan’s NKH news outlet, “a total of 25,000 workers from North Korea are to be dispatched” to the “Russian Shahed factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone of the central Russian republic of Tatarstan,” with the intention of increasing production. Although reports on North Korea by the source and similar Japanese and South Korean outlets have often proven far from reliable, the dispatch of North Korean workers to support Russia’s defence sector has long been considered likely by analysts, and corroborates reports from Ukrainian intelligence officials to this effect. North Korea retains a sizeable industrial workforce with high levels of technical education, and would benefit from remittances to its economy, from knowhow from Russian production lines, and on a geopolitical level from bolstering its neighbour’s military capabilities against <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/mattis-you-re-going-to-incinerate-a-couple-million-people-america-s-insane-plan-to-drop-80-nuclear-bombs-on-north-korea" target="_blank">common adversaries</a> in the Western world. </p><p ><img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/06/21/article_68560b08b924d1_54183742.jpeg" title="Shahed 136 Drone"></p><p >Russia’s defence sector has since mid-2022 considerably <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/expanded-production-russia-massive-strikes-output" >expanded its capacity</a> to produce single use attack drones, after first establishing this capability with Iranian support to manufacture the Shahed 136 under license. In May The Economist revealed that output of Shahed 136 drones had<a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/capacity-500-shahed-attacks-russia-expanding-production" > increased more than tenfold</a> from 300 a month, to over 100 per day, with Russian industry remaining on track to be able to produce up to 500 of the aircraft per day. This would allow for strikes using over 1000 of the aircraft to be launched several times per week. Successful expansion of drone production mirrors the efforts made across multiple areas of the defence sector to increase output to several times pre-2022 levels, with annual output of Iskander-M ballistic missile systems and Kh-101 cruise missiles today being <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russia-expanded-production-iskander-sustain" target="_blank">several times as high </a>as they were three years ago, while production of Su-34 strike fighters has <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russian-doubled-su34-production" >more than doubled</a>, and output of T-90M tanks <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russia-tripled-production-t90m-keep-up-wartime-attrition" >has tripled</a>. Not only did Russia’s defence sector contract to a small fraction of its Soviet era size in the 1990s, from which it is still very far from recovering, but technical education levels in the country also declined significantly, causing difficulties for the defence sector in the following decades. This has made inputs from the North Korean workforce, which avoided a comparable decline in standards, highly valued. It is expected that North Korean experts will play a much wider role in the Russian defence sector beyond drone production lines. </p><p ><img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/06/21/article_68560b5e21acc5_12134128.jpg" title="Korean People`s Army Personnel in the Russian Kursk Region "></p><p ></p><p >The report of North Korean workers being dispatched to support Russian drone production closely coincides with the <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/nkorea-bolstering-russia-kursk-engineers-mine" target="_blank">revelation</a> by Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu that the Korean People’s Army is set to dispatch 1000 mine clearance experts and 5000 military engineers to support de-mining and reconstruction efforts in the Russian Kursk region, following the routing of the last Ukrainian forces there in April. Shoigu has made increasingly frequent visits to North Korea, as the country’s importance to Russian security interests has <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russia-redeploys-50000-kharkov-kursk" >continued to grow</a>, stating that such visits were necessary to oversee “the intensive pace of the implementation” of the two countries’ strategic partnership agreement. North Korea  emerged as by far the <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russian-army-units-training-nkorean-140mm-mortars" >greatest foreign arms supplier </a>to the Russian Armed Forces, with its equipment prized not only for its <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/nkorean-bulsae4-antitank-takes-out-ukraine-artillery-kursk" >advanced capabilities</a>, but also for the sheer quantities available. The country’s production capacities for several kinds of armaments closely matched or exceeded those seen in Russia, despite the discrepancy in the size of the two countries’ populations and economies. Beyond this support, unprecedented <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russia-details-nkorea-role-repelling-kursk" >North Korean personnel deployments</a> to the Russian Kursk region for the first time placed the Korean People’s Army on the frontlines of a European conflict, where they have played a major role in repelling an incursion by both Ukrainian forces and contractor personnel from a <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/contractors-kursk-polish-french-details" >number of NATO members</a>.</p>