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North Korea Sends Putin 30,000 More Troops and 25,000 Drone Builders
Remember when North Korea was the global punchline for bad haircuts and worse missiles?
Well, it’s 2025, and Kim Jong Un just did a career pivot.
Forget “Hermit Kingdom,” now it’s “Hermit Kingdom with a Union Card.” And the newest employer? The Russian Ministry of Defense specializing in drone assembly lines, front-line cannon fodder, and, just to keep things interesting, a little backroom barter in sophisticated air defense systems.
Putin and Kim’s romance is the smash hit of the summer! Two houses, both alike in indignity, in fair Pyongyang where we lay our scene.
Moscow’s New North Korean Workforce: It’s Not Just About Borscht and Ballet Anymore
Moscow’s labor shortage isn’t new; Russian defense plants have been starving for skilled workers ever since the Soviet factory towns turned into bingo halls and rusting bus stops.
But the Ukraine war supercharged the crisis. As drone warfare morphed from curiosity to lifeline, the Kremlin’s planners realized their biggest bottleneck wasn’t technology, or even sanctions, it was a shortage of hands who actually know how to build this stuff… reliably, by the thousands.
