Gyeong Hong Jong, a North Korean special forces operative who was killed by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SOF) operatives in Kursk Oblast, has left behind a diary that is now being gradually translated. His notes reveal that North Korea has sent elite fighters to Russia.
It’s a weird place. From what I’ve heard, at this point it’s more like a giant plantation or a resource colony (with no foreign overlords) than a normal dictatorship. The three sectors of the economy are policing the common people, making stuff for export (often on the black market and often globally illegal stuff) and making nukes to protect from foreign adversaries. The money from exports goes to grain, and luxury items for a separate elite that doesn’t even like to stay in the country, let alone be part of it.