Russia is cutting millions in wages for 100,000 North Korean soldiers. It’s unlikely they’ll see much of it.

• New reports say North Korea could send as many as 100,000 troops to fight alongside Russia.

• Their wages are estimated at around $2,000 per month, per South Korean intelligence.

• But experts say Kim Jong Un will likely pocket much of the money and use it to maintain loyalty.

Russia is pouring money into deploying as many as 100,000 North Korean soldiers to support its war effort – but North Korean experts say the soldiers themselves are unlikely to receive any of it.

Instead, much of the money is likely to be pocketed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and those close to him.

Ukraine claims that up to 11,000 North Korean troops have been sent to help push back its forces in Kursk, and that number could rise.

Ukraine’s ambassador to South Korea, Dimytro Ponomarenko, told Voice of America over the weekend that the number could rise to 15,000, with troops possibly being exchanged every two to three months.

This could mean around 100,000 North Korean soldiers serving alongside Russia within a year, he said.

Anonymous sources familiar with the ratings of some G20 countries also used the 100,000 figure in conversation with Bloomberg.

For Russia, which South Korean intelligence estimates pays about $2,000 per month per soldier (about $22 million for 11,000 troops), this could quickly add up.

The money would be life-changing for most North Koreans. Defectors say the average salary for workers and soldiers there is less than $1 a month, according to the Associated Press.

But there’s a catch: they’re unlikely to see much, or even any of it.

“I suspect the money coming from Russia goes directly to the party and then to the Kim family,” Bruce W Bennett, a defense researcher and North Korea specialist at RAND, told Business Insider by email.

Bennett cautioned that his assessment was preliminary and “based on their organization and past behavior.”

There are many documented examples of the North Korean state keeping the income its citizens earn abroad.

“Maybe only a small amount or even nothing” goes to the soldiers themselves, Bennett said.

Where does the money go?

Hyunseung Lee, a former soldier who defected from North Korea in the early 2000s, also gave a grim assessment of the rewards North Korea’s soldiers would likely receive from fighting Ukraine.

“They will not receive any compensation,” he said in an interview with Radio Free Europe, adding that their families will not receive either.

RAND’s Bennett said there’s another reason soldiers don’t see much of the money. “Many of the soldiers will die and be unable to use the money they earn,” he said, although Kim could return some of their earnings to their families “in lieu of the loss of their sons.”

However, the new cash flow could play an important role in North Korea, where GDP is estimated at just $40 billion.

Kim Jong Un is known for his exuberant taste. In October, South Korean lawmaker Yoon Sang-hyun said North Korea had imported luxury goods worth nearly $52 million in the first eight months of 2024 alone — including cosmetics, watches and liquor, the Korea Economic Daily reported.

Yoon said Kim gifts these luxury imports to the country’s elites to ensure their loyalty.

Chung Min Lee, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment Asia Program, wrote in April that “Kim, his family and his closest advisers appear in public wearing very expensive watches, clothes and handbags that are slowly becoming more available to the North Korean elite. “

But he added that loyalty had declined significantly in recent years due to international sanctions and a marked economic decline as a result Kim’s policy of spending up to 30% of the country’s GDP on defense.

Bennett estimates that some of the money received from Russia will go to military equipment and some to consumer goods such as food, “especially for the elites,” he said.

Some of the payment could even come directly in the form of food, he said.

That’s important “because life in North Korea is miserable, creating a degree of public instability, and so Kim has tried to improve the availability of food and other goods to prevent more open rebellion,” he said.

Meanwhile, the North Korean soldiers on their way to Russia face a worrying future.

Ukraine’s allies have repeatedly said that North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine will become “cannon fodder” on the battlefield.

According to reports, North Korea is sending its ‘Storm Corps’, an elite special unit. But Lee, the former soldier, told Radio Free Europe that “they are not ready for it at all.”

He argued that the additional training they will receive – reportedly only a few weeks, some of which will be done in live combat – is not enough to become familiar with the more high-tech equipment they will have to use.

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