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The grainy mobile phone footage shows olive green-clad soldiers lining up for kit in a gloomy-looking military barracks.
The clips, which emerged late last week, are said to show the arrival of North Korean troops at a base in Russia, ahead of their expected deployment to join Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.
Some 3,000 North Korean soldiers are already reported to be training in Russia and more than 10,000 are expected to be deployed in the coming weeks.
US officials briefed last week the deployment was “a very, very serious issue” and could involve concessions to Pyongyang from the Kremlin that would harm global security.
While Western officials said it is still not clear if the North Koreans are going into battle, Kyiv said at least the first tranche are on their way to fight Ukraine in Kursk.
Potentially, the deployment not only gives Russia thousands more troops to wage its grinding and costly offensives, but also appears to be the first significant fruit of a June co-operation pact between Putin and North Korea’s supreme leader.
The deployment risks escalating and widening the war in Ukraine as extra nations join the conflict.
It has also caused concern about the potential strength and aims of the new alliance between Moscow and Kim Jong-un, and alarm at what North Korea may be receiving in return for such a hefty commitment.
Victor Cha, of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told PBS: “Sending troops is about the biggest symbol of an alliance commitment that one country can make to another. So it really shows that North Korea is all in with the Russians in terms of this war in Ukraine, this war in Europe.”
No one is more alarmed than South Korea. The two countries never signed a peace treaty to end their conflict in the 1950s and now maintain only a tense ceasefire.
Seoul is worried that Pyongyang’s price for helping Moscow could be money, military equipment or know-how that it would then use against South Korea.
Seoul has voiced “grave concern” about their pact and called on Moscow to stop its “illegal co-operation” with Pyongyang.
There have been reports that South Korea will deploy military intelligence troops to Ukraine to analyse North Korean tactics and interrogate prisoners.
South Korea is a major arms exporter, though it has a policy of not providing weapons to countries already at war. North Korea’s deployment could put pressure on the South Korean government to try to overcome that.
A proxy war on Ukraine’s territory
If South Korea becomes more heavily involved, the two countries may in effect find themselves fighting a proxy war on Ukraine’s territory.
Darcie Draudt-Véjares, a fellow with the Carnegie Endowment, said: “This potential deployment of third-party ground forces risks transforming the conflict between Russia and Ukraine into even more of a global security crisis, with particularly stark implications for the Korean Peninsula.”
North Korea’s support for Russia has evolved over time.
Kim first supplied ammunition, including millions of artillery shells and missiles which have been used on Ukraine’s cities. There have also been reports of technical advisers on the ground.
Sending thousands of troops marks a sea change however, and analysts believe that presumably comes with a far higher price tag for Russia.
How the new alliance between Russia and North Korea affects global security depends on what that price was and what concessions Kim might have obtained from the Kremlin.
There are several things that Kim may want from Russia, analysts say, and his price may have included a whole package.
Firstly, there is a simple financial motive. Kim is desperate for foreign currency to keep his regime afloat and North Korea has long sent workers to Russia to earn money.
Observers also say Kim craves international recognition and status from a world that instead views him as a crazed despot. This troop deployment puts him on the world stage.
Pyongyang may also be looking to give its troops the chance to learn from a conflict which is often described as a laboratory for 21st century warfare.
While the North Korean army is vast, with 1.2 million personnel, it has no recent combat experience and its weapons are outdated. A deployment to Ukraine could see them gain first-hand experience of drones, electronic warfare, missiles and armoured warfare on a modern battlefield.
That expertise could be fed back to the army facing off against South Korea.
Decrepit conventional forces
North Korea could also have asked for Moscow’s help updating its conventional forces which are often decrepit.
All of these possibilities will be concerning to Seoul and the wider region, but a bigger worry is that Pyongyang has done a deal for more advanced military know-how.
Kim is thought to want help for the country’s satellite programme as well as assistance building nuclear submarines.
Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraines military intelligence agency, told the Economist this week that North Korea’s price for its help included assistance with low-yield (or “tactical”) nuclear warheads.
Most worrying of all, and a threat to the entire Western Pacific region and even America, would be if Russia has agreed to help with missile technology.
North Korea already has an arsenal of missiles and has been testing long-range versions that could theoretically reach any part of the United States.
However, the Ukraine war has shown its short-range missiles at least to be unreliable, with Kyiv reporting around half the North Korean weapons fired by Russia have malfunctioned or exploded in mid-air.
Any help to make North Korea’s missiles more effective would imperil the entire region.
Finally, it may be that Kim has won his most considerable concession in the form of the strategic agreement with Moscow itself.
Under the agreement, in an echo of the Nato collective defence pact, each side promises to “immediately provide military and other assistance using all available means if either side is in a state of war”.
This time, Pyongyang is helping Moscow out, but the treaty works both ways and could fundamentally change assumptions about a possible war on the Korean peninsula.
South Korean and American generals planning for the contingency of an outbreak of war with the north will now have to factor in a possible Russian intervention.
