Pyongyang’s recent transfer of ammunition, artillery systems, ballistic missiles, combat vehicles and personnel to Russia — and the prospect of tanks and 6,000 engineering troops joining the more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers already reported in 2024 — has generated intense attention over what the DPRK will gain materially from Moscow.
Analysis has focused rightly on oil, food, weapons components, air defense systems, space and satellite technology and potential assistance to North Korea’s strategic programs. Equally important, however, is a political reading of the communications that have accompanied decades of North Korean military adventurism. How the Kim regime explains and justifies its actions at home and abroad often reveals its strategic intent.
This article argues that North Korea’s provocations — from maritime incidents to missile and nuclear testing, and now to material and manpower transfers to Russia — are intended to send distinct messages to three primary audiences: i) the North Korean population, ii) the US-South Korea (ROK) alliance (and Seoul and Washington more broadly), and iii) the Western world at large.
These messages help explain not only what Pyongyang does but why it chooses particular forms of action and particular modes of rhetoric.
Domestic messaging: sustaining legitimacy, mobilizing sacrifice
Domestic propaganda in the Rodong Sinmun and allied outlets performs the familiar authoritarian function of normalizing state behavior, consolidating loyalty to the Kim family and molding public consent for hardship and sacrifice.
Missile launches, nuclear tests and military deployments are framed as demonstrations of indigenous technological prowess, defensive necessity and the personal leadership of the supreme leader. The technical feats are attributed to the regime’s vision, and strategic violence is packaged as existential defense against imperialist aggression.
The pattern is consistent across episodes. When the ROKS Cheonan sank in March 2010, domestic organs pursued a twofold strategy: deny culpability and convert the incident into proof of a hostile external environment that justified vigilance and sacrifice.
Rodong Sinmun editorials and commentaries dismissed allegations of North Korean responsibility and accused South Korean authorities of staging or exploiting the incident. At the same time, rhetoric aimed at rousing outrage and readiness for retaliation cast the military as the protector of the nation and implied that citizens must accept the burdens of national defense.
Similarly, missile and nuclear tests are reported not merely as technical accomplishments but as collective triumphs, proof of self-reliance (juche) and evidence that the leadership secures the nation against foreign threats.
Celebratory accounts routinely credit Kim Jong Un by name, tying prestige and competence to the family line. This rhetorical architecture prepares the population to accept casualties and overseas deployments as patriotic duty, and to view any dissent as betrayal.
Two inferences follow. First, domestic messaging seeks to create an impression of social cohesion and total compliance — that ordinary North Koreans not only understand but endorse the regime’s strategic choices.
Second, by portraying sacrifices as necessary and righteous, the regime reduces the political cost of sending personnel and materiel abroad (which will be elaborated on later in this article); public resistance is less likely if the narrative of duty and honour is pervasive and unchallenged.
Messaging to US-ROK alliance: deterrence, deception and information warfare
To Seoul and Washington, Pyongyang’s communications have two complementary objectives: to deter and to manipulate.
Violent, explicit threats — the language of “deadly force” and “prompt physical strikes” — are designed to raise the perceived cost of intervention and to keep defensive alliances off-balance. At the same time, targeted information operations aim to sow confusion and shift blame for incidents in ways that complicate alliance decision-making.
The Cheonan episode illustrates both approaches. North Korean outlets and official statements denied responsibility and accused South Korea of fabricating or staging the attack, suggesting friendly fire or US-ROK mishap as alternative explanations.
These denials were accompanied by public threats against US-ROK exercises and assertions of the North’s defensive entitlement. The combined effect is deterrent posturing (threaten severe reprisals) and reputational warfare (convince domestic and international audiences that accusations are false or politically motivated).
With missiles and nuclear tests, the KCNA and other organs escalate the tone toward the alliance: tests are framed as necessary enforcements of deterrence and as responses to joint allied hostility and sanctions.
The messaging is calibrated to signal capability (we can hit you) and resolve (we will use force if pressed), thereby complicating allies’ calculations about coercion, escalation control and the viability of diplomatic engagement.
Two strategic dynamics are evident. First, hard-edged rhetoric narrows the political space for confidence-building because it emphasizes irreconcilable hostility. Second, narrative maneuvers that question the provenance of incidents aim to create ambiguity, delaying or diluting coordinated allied responses and eroding the persuasive power of evidence-based accusations.
Messaging to the West: delegitimization, legalism and status claims
For Western audiences and international institutions, DPRK communications pursue a mixture of delegitimization (attack the credibility and motives of Western actors), legalistic defense (frame actions as sovereign rights or treaty-compliant), and status aspiration (seek recognition as a de facto or de jure nuclear power).
When Western-led investigations or UN resolutions point to DPRK culpability — whether in maritime incidents, missile launches or sanctions violations — Pyongyang’s outlets label those findings as “fabricated,” “smear campaigns” or illegal exercises of power.
The KCNA repeatedly depicted multinational investigative findings on the Cheonan as contrived and politically driven, arguing that evidence was “cooked up” by hostile states. The aim is to discredit not only particular findings but the epistemic authority of Western investigative bodies.
With nuclear tests, the regime advances legalistic defences: tests are presented as reactions to coercive sanctions and the collapse of talks, as necessary measures of self-defense, and — when convenient — as technically safe or environmentally benign.
Denials of radiation leakage and claims of procedural care signal an attempt to blunt Western moral outrage and remove scope for collective sanctioning on humanitarian grounds.
More ambitiously, repeated tests and declarative rhetoric serve as a status claim: North Korea seeks recognition, not simply as a pariah, but as a state that has joined the ranks of nuclear-armed powers and therefore merits a different diplomatic treatment.
That claim is unlikely to be accepted explicitly by the United States or other staunch opponents, but it is calibrated to appeal to states that may be more ambivalent, and to domestic and international constituencies who might interpret de facto capability as a fait accompli.
Finally, in messaging about assistance to Russia and troop dispatches, Pyongyang blends treaty legalism with moral framing: deployments are presented as compliant with mutual-defense obligations and as anti-neo-Nazi or anti-occupation actions.
This framing aims to neutralize Western criticism by insisting on legality and moral purpose, while signaling to third-party audiences that North Korea retains diplomatic options beyond China.
Communications about aid to Russia: denial, omission and later affirmation
Pyongyang’s handling of allegations that it has supplied Russia with weapons and personnel exemplifies how messaging shifts with political risk and operational security.
Publicly, official statements repeatedly denied arms transfers, labeling accusations as a “rumor” or “hostile attempt to tarnish” the DPRK. This pattern of categorical denial preserved plausible deniability and avoided domestic or international fallout during early stages of clandestine assistance.
The Rodong Sinmun, however, displayed a different tactic: omission. It has rarely, if ever, reported on arms shipments that would flout UN sanctions. Public acknowledgement of covert transfers would have complicated relations with states that still provide economic lifelines and risked domestic credibility if details leaked.
Yet once troop deployments became politically useful to frame as heroic solidarity — and once a mutual-defense treaty supplied a formal pretext — state media shifted to praise: articles lauded soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces, described their actions in moral and heroic terms and celebrated “friendship proven by blood.”
KCNA’s earlier denials evolved into a narrative that emphasized lawfulness (deployments were in accordance with treaty obligations) and moral purpose (liberation of occupied territories, annihilation of “neo-Nazis”).
The rhetorical pivot performs several functions simultaneously: it deflects earlier denials by reframing deployments as lawful, justifies participation to domestic audiences and telegraphs to international observers that North Korea and Russia present a united front that sanctions and isolation cannot easily dissolve.
This communicative strategy carries an implicit geopolitical message: Pyongyang is demonstrating that its external options extend beyond Beijing; it can cultivate powerful patrons willing to reciprocate materially and politically.
For the West, that possibility complicates containment strategies because it weakens the leverage sanctions might otherwise provide.
Holistic implications and policy inferences
Interpreting DPRK communications across these audiences yields several important takeaways:
- Domestic cohesion is the primary end-state of DPRK propaganda. Weapons tests, deployments and high-profile exchanges are choreographed to reinforce the regime’s narrative of existential threat, technological self-reliance and dynastic legitimacy, thereby lowering political resistance to military sacrifice.
- Messaging to the alliance is calibrated to deter and to inject ambiguity. Threats raise costs for intervention; disinformation campaigns and alternative narratives weaken the evidentiary basis for decisive allied action.
- Communications to the West emphasise delegitimization and legalistic defense, while asserting de facto nuclear status. Pyongyang seeks to make its strategic gains irreversible in perception if not formally recognized, thereby raising the diplomatic price of continued isolation.
- The rhetoric surrounding assistance to Russia indicates a strategic calculation: maintain deniability while extracting material benefits, then convert involvement into an assertion of respectability and treaty-sanctioned action once the political calculus permits.
These dynamics have practical consequences. Western and allied policymakers must account not only for concrete transfers of weapons and personnel but also for the ways Pyongyang’s narratives reduce the political cost of aggression, complicate allied coordination and attempt to fracture international consensus.
Evidence-based public diplomacy that pre-empts and counters disinformation, robust multilateral investigation mechanisms and targeted responses that preserve sanctions pressure while limiting escalation are all necessary complements to deterrence.
Conclusion
North Korea’s military adventurism cannot be read solely as a catalogue of provocation, materiel, tests and deployments. Its communications strategy — the persistent, audience-specific narratives manufactured by the Rodong Sinmun and KCNA — is integral to the regime’s strategic calculus.
Domestically, propaganda secures obedience and reduces resistance to sacrifices abroad; vis-à-vis the US-ROK alliance it seeks to deter and to blur responsibility; toward the West it pursues delegitimization, legal rationales and claims to status.
The DPRK’s recent dealings with Russia combine clandestine pragmatism with subsequent public politics of legitimization designed to show that sanctions and isolation have limits. Any effective policy response must therefore be as much about countering narratives and maintaining international coherence as it is about tracking shells and troops.
Liang Tuang Nah (PhD) is a research fellow with the Military Studies Program, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
Liang Tuang wishes to thank Colonel Loyd W. Brown, current senior officer with Headquarters Commandant, United States European Command, for his invaluable intellectual input supporting this article. The views represented here do not represent the official stands of RSIS, NTU, the United States European Command or the US Department of War.
