White House monitoring reports of North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia

United States is monitoring reports that North Korean soldiers are deploying to Russia to fight in Ukraine. White House is continuing to look into those reports and talking to its allies and partners. If it is true that the North Korean soldiers are going there to join the war against Ukraine, it would certainly mark a dangerous and highly concerning development.

The development signaled another demonstration of Russia’s growing desperation and his growing isolation that he has got to reach out to North Korea for potential infantry support to his ground operations. There is no question about Russian forces continue to suffer an extraordinary amount of casualties on the battlefield, losing more than 1,200 soldiers per day. That is a truly historic amount of soldiers killed and wounded in this fight, all to accomplish but a warped and twisted idea of his about Ukraine’s ability to exist as a sovereign state.

All of this is and proves the point that Russia is increasingly desperate and increasingly isolated on the world stage. The United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have not confirmed that North Korean troops were sent to Russia. But the reports of their presence have already stoked concerns in South Korea that Russia might provide North Korea with sophisticated technologies that can sharply enhance the North’s nuclear and missile programs in return for its troop dispatch.

South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador to protest deepening military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow and demand the immediate pullout of the North Korean troops.

South Korea’s spy agency had confirmed that North Korea sent 1,500 special operation forces to Russia to support Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Ukrainian government had intelligence that 10,000 North Korean soldiers were being prepared to join invading Russian forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin will be shaking hands with multiple world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Erdogan and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian.

The leaders will convene in the Russian city of Kazan for a meeting of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, defying predictions that the war in Ukraine and an international arrest warrant against Putin would turn him into a pariah. The alliance, which aims to counterbalance the Western-led world order, initially included Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) but started to rapidly expand. Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia joined; Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Malaysia formally applied, and a number of others expressed a desire to be members.

These countries can decide for themselves who they want to associate with and, especially how they want to be economically linked with one another. Russia is increasingly isolated on the world stage, Putin is still having to take radical steps to prop up his currency and to keep his war economy going. In January 2024, North Korea launched a test flight for a new type of missile.

The test was the first for an under-development strategic cruise missile.

Reports named the weapon as a Pulhwasal-3-31 missile. The test fire had no negative effect on the security of the neighboring country and was not connected with the situation of the region. The launch came amid growing cooperation between the United States, South Korea, and Japan, with the three countries saying they were sharing real-time updates and analysis on military activity in the region.

The United States State Department had called for North Korea to refrain from further provocative, destabilizing actions, and return to diplomacy. North Korea was eager to engage in substantive discussions on identifying ways to not just manage military risk but create lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula, as well as its continued stated goal of the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The number of North Korea-linked hacks of cryptocurrency trading platforms hit an all-time high in 2023, new research on such thefts finds, highlighting continued cyberthreats from the country.

North Korea-linked hacks have been on the rise over the past few years. Cyber-espionage groups are using various tactics to acquire large amounts of crypto assets. However, the estimated value of thefts by North Korea-linked hackers declined to $1 billion in 2023 from $1.7 billion in 2022 as a bear market brought down the value of virtual assets. Including other cases, there were 231 cryptocurrency hacks globally in 2023, up from 219 in 2022, and the estimated amount stolen fell 54% to $1.7 billion.

Platforms’ increased security contributed to 2023’s overall drop.

Attackers continued to develop more sophisticated tools, finding holes to exploit smart contracts, or laundering their spoils through new platforms called mixers. Investigators urged users to be suspicious of claims that they could make virtual money quickly and to take all possible steps to secure digital wallets, as third parties were vulnerable to hacks. North Korea had chosen to use its intelligence services not to collect intelligence necessarily, but to actually just hack into and steal from virtual currency exchanges.

It was not like North Korea is necessarily buying innocuous things. North Korea is a country that puts between 16% to 25% of its gross domestic product toward its military. Most of Pyongyang’s cyber-loot funds the military, such thefts coincided with an acceleration in the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. North Korea’s escalating weapons tests, rhetoric, and cooperation with Russia renewed fears it had made a decision to go to war.

The United States government’s work with counterparts in South Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia is vital to fighting North Korea’s illicit activity. Other crimes were on the rise, too, especially among human traffickers across Southeast Asia who force people to conduct online scams. Despite ramping up their efforts and expanding their target range, hacking groups linked to North Korea, such as Kimsuky and Lazarus Group, experienced a decrease in their illicit crypto gains in 2023.

In 2022, North Korea-linked exploits resulted in the theft of approximately $1.7 billion in crypto across 15 hacking incidents.

However, in 2023, these hacking groups stole around $1 billion worth of crypto from 20 hacks, indicating a decline in the value of their illicit gains despite an increase in exploits. North Korea-linked hacks would be more advanced and wide-ranging. With enhanced security measures in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols making it more challenging to steal crypto, North Korean hackers changed their areas of focus to centralized services and wallets.

Phishing and social engineering emerged as preferred attack vectors for North Korea-linked hackers in 2023, highlighting the need for employee education and awareness. Robust cybersecurity strategies, including vigilant employees and up-to-date technical defenses, were important. North Korea-linked hackers exhibited a tendency to spend more time within networks, underscoring the need for heightened network monitoring and security.

DeFi protocols susceptible to on-chain failures were advised to implement systems for monitoring on-chain activities, while platforms vulnerable to off-chain risks should reduce their reliance on centralized products and services.