Just days earlier than Kim Jong Un is because of stand with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to witness a display of China’s military might, North Korea has launched a propaganda movie praising its troops’ efforts combating for Russia in its warfare in opposition to Ukraine.
The 20-minute video, launched by North Korean state media KCTV, confirmed closely dramatized pictures of soldiers on the snow-covered battlefield – dealing with weapons, holding conferences with Russian soldiers, and putting in bombs on bushes.
It additionally confirmed aerial footage purporting to indicate injury inflicted by North Korean soldiers, with clips of explosions and focused strikes.
Other components of the video emphasised the soldiers’ patriotism – with one shot showing to indicate soldiers gazing at a framed portrait of Kim, and one other exhibiting a soldier urgent his cheek to the North Korean flag.
It’s unclear how a lot of the footage is genuine, or whether or not it has been staged or manipulated, as is widespread in North Korean propaganda. NCS can’t independently confirm when and the place the movies have been filmed.
“They’re presenting their participation in the Ukrainian war as a major exploit, as another confirmation of (North Korea’s) military might and their loyalty to the party, state and the leader himself,” mentioned Andrei Lankov, a professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University in Seoul.
The video gives a rosy view of the state of affairs on the bottom in a theatre that has turn into infamous for human wave assaults and horrific attrition charges on the Russian facet. Western officers estimated {that a} third of the 12,000 North Korea troops believed to be a part of the preliminary deployment have been both killed or wounded.
The program, initially shrouded in secrecy, was later confirmed by each Pyongyang and Moscow. In current weeks, Kim lastly acknowledged the lack of troops, holding two occasions in August to satisfy bereaved households.
Last Friday, he promised “a beautiful life” for the households of “martyrs” who perished combating for Russia, state media reported. Earlier in August, he mentioned his “heart aches,” with state media pictures exhibiting the chief embracing sobbing households and kneeling earlier than the portraits of deceased soldiers.
The propaganda video on Sunday paid tribute to those soldiers too, starting with a press release that troops had participated in operations to “liberate” the Russian area of Kursk in October 2024 after Ukraine’s shock offensive. It additionally named some fallen soldiers and described how that they had died.
For many years, North Korean propaganda has emphasised the importance of its army however “had very little real actual stuff to talk about,” mentioned Lankov, pointing to its earlier lack of actual battlefield expertise.
“Now, they’ve had a real war where, generally speaking, North Korean soldiers were fighting quite well,” he added. “It’s understandable that it’s likely to become a major topic of their domestic propaganda, domestic ideological education and indoctrination.”
North Korea has drawn nearer to Russia for the reason that warfare started, with consultants warning that Moscow could also be providing army and technological help to Pyongyang in change for its troops.
Both Kim and Russian chief Vladimir Putin will probably be in Beijing on Wednesday for a large army parade to mark the eightieth anniversary of the tip of World War II – setting the stage for a putting present of unity between the 2 autocrat leaders and China’s Xi Jinping.
The journey will probably be Kim’s first journey to China since 2019. Kim, who has solely launched into 10 international journeys since assuming energy in 2011, final left his remoted nation in 2023 to meet Putin at a distant spaceport in Russia’s far east.
Hong Min, a senior analysis fellow on the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, mentioned North Korea might have launched the video forward of the Beijing go to to painting Kim as “an important leader with a strategic position in Northeast Asia that is on par with Putin and Xi Jinping at the Victory Day (parade).”
It would additional the narrative that North Korea is “forming a solidarity front with powerful countries on the diplomatic stage,” Hong added.
On Sunday, Kim additionally examined missiles on a “newly inaugurated” manufacturing line and discovered in regards to the “overall condition of the state missile production capacity,” state media KCNA reported on Monday.
Images printed by KCNA appeared to indicate Kim at an undisclosed location inspecting a number of dozen weapons in varied levels of manufacturing and speaking with uniformed officers.
According to the KCNA report, North Korea had “successfully fulfilled” its five-year plan to broaden its missile manufacturing capability.
“Various kinds of missiles were put into serial production,” the company reported, including that Kim had ratified three new long-term plans “related to missile production capacity.”
North Korea has ramped up its weapons program in the previous few years, quickly modernizing its armed forces, growing new weapons and testing intercontinental ballistic missiles that may attain nearly anyplace within the United States.
Kim has additionally ramped up his rhetoric, vowing lately to construct up the country’s nuclear program and threatening to make use of it to destroy South Korea if attacked.