SEOUL, South Korea – With Russian President Vladimir Putin de facto confirming multiple signals of a North Korean troop presence in Russia and indications rising of their deployment to the war-torn Kursk oblast, Seoul is caught in a bind.

Russia’s State Duma on Thursday ratified a North Korean-Russian strategic partnership that was agreed in Pyongyang in June. On the same day, Mr. Putin addressed the issue of images of North Korean troops in Russia that have appeared online.

Though North Korea’s United Nations representative in New York called the troop deployment claims “groundless rumors,” Mr. Putin, speaking at a press briefing at the BRICS Summit in Kazan, admitted that the images “are a serious thing.”

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“You may be aware that the Treaty on Strategic Partnership was ratified, I believe, just today,” Mr. Putin continued. “It has Article 4, and we have never doubted the fact that the [North Korean’ leadership takes our agreements seriously. However, it is up to us to decide what we will do and how we are going to do it. …”

Article 4 states that if either nation faces “an armed invasion,” the other party should “provide military and other assistance.”

Whether Pyongyang’s deployment will be to frontlines or rear areas is unknown, but indications are that it will be kinetic. 

On Friday, Ukrainian media said North Korean troops had been identified close to the front in Kursk.

South Korea is struggling to forge a response to what now looks to be imminent North Korean engagement in the Ukraine conflict.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Thursday raised the possibility of arming Ukraine. 

But with the two U.S. presidential candidates holding differing positions on the Ukraine conflict. Seoul appears to be awaiting the result of the upcoming election in its key ally before committing.

The developments are dredging up memories from South Korea’s own military-industrial history. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may be hoping to reproduce Seoul’s massive, and highly profitable, deployment alongside U.S. troops in the Vietnam conflict.

Here come Kim’s men

Over the last week, Kyiv, Seoul and Washington have all claimed the presence of North Korean troops in Russia. Numbers range from the White House’s estimate of 3,000 to Seoul’s and Kyiv’s estimates, of 12,000 to 13,000.

They are difficult to disguise. Small groups of North Koreans could operate under ethnic cover in the Russian Far East, but large numbers could not: The Russian Army’s only ethnically exclusive units are Chechen.

Last week, two clips from Russia surfaced and been widely analyzed. One purports to show armed North Koreans moving on an exercise area; another shows Asian troops receiving equipment in a depot.

Data continues to emerge.

South Korean intelligence claims to have identified a North Korean missile officer, formerly photographed alongside North Korean state leader Kim Jong-un, wearing a Russian cap and holding binoculars, standing beside what looks to be a Russian officer. The two are allegedly at the launch site in Ukraine of KN-23 missiles, North Korea’s version of Russia’s “Iskander” tactical ballistic.

Intelligence agencies claim that North Korea has, since late last year, been supplying Russia with massive quantities of ammunition and rocketry.

One more clip on social media shows East Asian officers in leather coats — identified but not confirmed as North Koreans – touring central Moscow, and having selfies taken with excited Russians.

Though Mr. Putin has essentially admitted the North Korean presence, he gave no indication of what role they will play in the Ukrainian conflict.

They could feasibly be used in combat; used to “backfill” Russian units holding defenses, freeing those units to assault; or used as labor to rebuild the ruined infrastructure in the parts of Ukraine Russia has captured.

Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean general, said it is “impossible” to guess their role but conceded labor units would only require minimal arms.

North Korean loggers in the Russian Far East have been neither armed nor uniformed. However, small numbers of North Korean laborers are believed to have fought in Moscow’s Chechen Wars as mercenaries under Russian command.

Another expert is convinced the North Koreans in Russia are combat troops.

“They are not labor forces: You don’t need labor forces to be armed with gear,” said Yang Uk, a military specialist at the Asan Institute. “I think they are actual combat units.”

Mr. Yang believes North Korea is deploying three infantry brigades and a special forces brigade. South Korean intelligence claims advance parties sent to Russia are special forces.

North Korea’s 11th “Storm” Corps – which was inspected by Mr. Kim in September and October — fields 14 SF brigades: 10 army, two airborne and two amphibious, Mr. Yang said.

He noted that these brigades are more akin to U.S. Army Rangers than smaller, Tier-1 SF such as Delta and SEAL Team 6.

Rangers, trained as shock troops, are unsuited to defensive duties or border guarding, though regular North Korean infantry could undertake those roles.

Mr. Yang speculated that their likeliest area of operations would be the lodgment captured by Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk oblast.

This week, a Russian state TV pundit said that the North Korean deployment will likely be, “not on the territory that the West considers the Ukrainian land occupied by us, but on the classical canonical territory of the Russian Federation.”  

The Kyiv Independent, which has led many reports of Russian troops in Ukraine, on Friday cited Ukrainian intelligence as saying North Korean troops have been identified near the Kursk front.

South Korea’s dilemma

North Korea is breaking new ground: It has never undertaken a major ex-peninsula expedition. For South Korea, memories are being resurrected.

South Korea sent 320,000 troops to fight alongside the doomed U.S. defense of South Vietnam, and South Korean businesses profited massively as contractors in the war-torn country.

Seoul is estimated to have earned close to $1 billion in U.S. currency over nine years of war: A massive foreign exchange injection for what has since become a world-class industrial powerhouse.

Pyongyang is “hoping for something similar to the considerable economic and military gains that South Korea received for sending troops to Vietnam,” Doo Jin-ho, a Russia expert at the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses, told the Hankyoreh newspaper.

If North Korean troops receive pay of Russian volunteers — $3,000 to $5,000 per month — it would be “a huge boost for the North Korean economy,” Mr. Doo said.

Fighting for Moscow will also secure Russian support for Pyongyang in any future peninsula contingency, he warned.

South Korea’s response to these far-reaching developments has been muted.

On the diplomatic front, Seoul this week summoned the Russian ambassador for a dressing down. Regarding the Moscow-Pyongyang strategic partnership, Seoul spoke out on Friday.

“The government expresses grave concerns that Russia is proceeding with the ratification of the Russia-North Korea treaty in the midst of the North’s deployment of its troops to Russia,” a government official told news agency Yonhap.

A debate is underway regarding whether Seoul should reverse its policy of not arming combatant nations and start supplying weaponry direct to Kyiv.

Mr. Yoon told a Thursday press briefing, “While we have maintained our principle of not directly supplying lethal weapons, we can also review our stance more flexibly, depending on the level of North Korean military activities.”

South Korea’s powerful arms industry has been boosted by the war, selling NATO nations and other democracies with tens of billions of dollars worth of hardware, including tanks, self-propelled artillery and tactical rocket systems. 

However, a person familiar with diplomatic affairs told The Washington Times that Seoul is unlikely to forge any significant policies before the outcome of the Nov. 6 presidential election in the U.S. has been decided.

In addition to arming Ukraine, South Korea could apply an economic squeeze on Russia.

Jeffrey Robertson, who teaches Diplomatic Studies at Seoul’s Yonsei University, says that while Korea Inc’s shipments to Russia have been cut back since the Ukraine War began, exports to the Central Asian “Stans” that offer economic backdoor links to Russia, have soared.