SEOUL, August 07 (AJP) - North Korea is gaining first-hand experience in drones, artillery and ballistic missiles on the battlefields of Ukraine while South Korea's front-line forces are confronting failures in something more basic: loaded weapons, reporting and command.
The contrast is sharpening as Pyongyang expands military cooperation with Russia and continues developing its nuclear and missile arsenal, while Seoul investigates why some troops guarding the world's most heavily fortified border stood watch without ammunition loaded into their weapons and how a U.S. military drone taking part in a joint exercise was nearly mistaken for a hostile aircraft.
The stakes rose again Thursday when North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile from the Wonsan area toward the East Sea, its 10th ballistic missile launch this year, according to South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff.
But North Korea is no longer learning only through weapons tests at home.
Its involvement in Russia's war against Ukraine has expanded from supplying artillery shells and missiles to sending troops and, more recently, a missile unit.
Ukrainian military intelligence said this week that about 90 North Korean personnel had begun deploying to Russia's western Voronezh region and could eventually operate as many as 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has also said Russia may be preparing to receive another 30,000 North Korean troops. The size of any additional deployment has not been independently confirmed.
North Korean troops have already gained combat experience in and around Russia's Kursk region, exposing them to a battlefield shaped by drones, electronic warfare, artillery and rapidly changing Western and Russian tactics.
For Pyongyang, that amounts to an opportunity few militaries receive: testing soldiers, weapons and tactics against an experienced opponent in an actual war.
Rep. Jin Seong-joon, a ruling Democratic Party lawmaker who chairs the National Assembly's National Defense Committee, said Seoul should treat the change seriously.
"North Korea is strengthening its alliances with Russia and China while learning and training for modern warfare through its deployment to the war in Ukraine," Jin told AJP.
South Korea must revise its operational plans and training for the changing battlefield, he said, while ensuring that basic border security does not suffer in the process.
"There must never be complacency or negligence in the existing border security posture," Jin said.
Rep. Hwang Myung-sun, another Democratic Party member of the committee, called North Korea's battlefield exposure a "qualitative transformation."
"This is not simply an expansion of conventional military strength but a qualitative leap in its ability to conduct modern warfare," Hwang said.
The concern is not that North Korea will simply copy Russian tactics.
Its troops are also observing Ukrainian forces employing drones, Western weapons and new methods of combining reconnaissance, targeting and artillery. Any Russian transfer of military technology would add another layer to what Pyongyang can bring home.
South Korea, meanwhile, is examining a series of lapses along its western front.
The Army's 1st Corps changed instructions earlier this year so that ammunition was kept outside K6 heavy machine guns and K4 automatic grenade launchers used at general outposts and guard posts near the Demilitarized Zone.
Inspections subsequently found some troops standing guard without ammunition loaded into K2 rifles and other individual weapons, although ammunition was carried separately.
The military has since ordered front-line units to comply with ammunition-loading requirements.
Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back relieved 1st Corps commander Lt. Gen. Han Ki-sung of his duties on Aug. 3 as investigations continued.
Hwang said the case went beyond one commander.
"It is a structural problem," he said. "Defects that accumulated in the field command system under the name of customary practice have now surfaced."
A separate episode raised questions about communication between South Korean and U.S. forces.
During a Korea Marine Exercise Program drill on July 30, a U.S. Marine Corps fixed-wing reconnaissance drone flew near Story Range in Paju, about 3.7 kilometers south of the Military Demarcation Line.
South Korean forces identified it as an unknown aircraft and prepared for a possible shootdown.
The U.S. side had notified a South Korean 1st Corps working-level officer of the flight by text message the previous day, according to a JCS inspection.
The message never moved up the command chain.
Investigators also found that formal airspace and flight approval procedures had not been properly completed.
Rep. Kim Dae-sik of the conservative People Power Party said the ammunition and drone cases exposed failures both inside the Korean military and in combined operations.
"Internally, the command and reporting system failed, while externally, procedures for South Korea-U.S. coordination failed," Kim said.
"The problem was not that the South Korea-U.S. alliance is weak. It arose because a strong alliance was operated loosely."
Rep. Koh Dong-jin, another PPP lawmaker, said the underlying weakness was a military culture in which procedures established at headquarters were not always followed in the field and critical information failed to reach commanders.
For Seoul, those failures are emerging just as it pours more money into the technologies transforming warfare elsewhere.
South Korea's 2026 defense budget totals 65.86 trillion won ($46.5 billion), including nearly 20 trillion won for defense capability improvement.
The military is also moving to acquire more than 20,000 low-cost combat drones and train some 500,000 personnel in drone operations as it tries to absorb lessons from Ukraine and other recent conflicts.
Koh said Seoul should focus investment not on matching North Korea weapon for weapon but on capabilities that can neutralize Pyongyang's asymmetric strengths, including nuclear weapons, missiles, drones and special operations forces.
Artificial intelligence, advanced semiconductors and unmanned systems should take a larger role, he said, while South Korea and the United States repeatedly train for nuclear contingencies and the integration of Korean conventional forces with U.S. strategic assets.
Rep. Cheon Ha-ram of the Reform Party also said the Ukraine war was giving North Korea access to the "cutting edge of modern warfare," particularly drone operations.
But he argued that no amount of advanced equipment could compensate for weakened fundamentals at the front.
"The 1st Corps' unloaded-weapon guard posture shows a situation in which the objectives of front-line units have become distorted into 'avoiding accidents' and 'not provoking North Korea,'" Cheon said.
Lawmakers differed over why the failures occurred and how Seoul should approach Pyongyang.
They agreed more readily on the danger.
North Korea is returning from Russia with experience that cannot be acquired on a training ground. Its troops are learning how drones, missiles, artillery and electronic warfare work when an enemy shoots back.
South Korea is also trying to learn from Ukraine, investing in drones, artificial intelligence and manned-unmanned warfare.
But its recent problems carry a simpler lesson.
Modern warfare may depend increasingly on algorithms, drones and precision weapons. Front-line defense still depends on weapons being ready, orders being followed and the right information reaching the right commander in time.
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