North Korea could improve its economic situation by supporting the war in Ukraine (satellite images)
Texty.org.ua have analyzed satellite images of North Korea's nighttime lighting and concluded that between 2022 and 2024, the DPRK's economic situation improved slightly. This may have been due to the money it receives from Russia for shells, missiles, and other military products.
The first reports of North Korea supplying Russia with missiles appeared about six months after the start of the full-scale invasion. In September 2022, New York Times reported, citing U.S. intelligence, that Russia was buying millions of artillery shells from the DPRK.
In October 2023, official Washington confirmed the supply of weapons from the DPrk. It stated that in the past few weeks alone, North Korea had sent more than 1,000 containers of military cargo to Russia. In early 2024, the United States confirmed that the DPRK was also supplying ballistic missiles to Russia. In October 2024, South Korean intelligence reported that about 12,000 DPRK military personnel were being trained in Russia and preparing to be sent to the front.
Russia's interest in this matter is quite clear: weapons from the DPRK cover the shortage of domestic production, and Korean soldiers will help Putin delay the general mobilization in Russia.
North Korea has its own interests, including financial ones. The economic situation in the DPRK has probably improved somewhat since the country began assisting Russia in its armed aggression against Ukraine. We made this assumption by analyzing VIIRS nighttime lighting satellite imagery.
Images of night lights are widely used to assess the economies of different countries. The brightness of night lighting correlates with urbanization, economic activity, and infrastructure development. North Korea has always been a dark spot on the world map, as the Western media have repeatedly written about, pointing out the lack of night lighting in North Korea compared to South Korea. Although it remains a dark spot globally, the number of night lights in the DPRK has increased significantly over the past few years.
On the map below, the blue color indicates the lighting recorded in 2024 but not present in March 2022. In particular, there has been an increase in illumination near the port of Chongjin, which has been repeatedly implicated in arms supply investigations.
During this same time, most of Ukraine was plunged into darkness. The map below shows in red the nighttime lighting that existed in March 2021 but which did not exist in March 2024.
North Korea sees the war in Ukraine as a great opportunity to make money, as the country has been under severe sanctions for decades and has been in complete economic stagnation. However, the move to active participation in the war also shows Kim Jong-un's desire to have an army trained in real combat. Therefore, it is likely that the DPRK plans to use this experience against its main enemy. The democratic world's weak reaction to the antics of crazy dictators only fuels their appetite for military conflicts.
