South Korea’s 500,000 Drone Warriors Will Be a Hollow Force

Ukraine has reshaped the battlefield with cheap, expendable drones. South Korea reads the signals and wants to match the scale. North Korea has been reading the same signals through a more direct channel.

Since late 2024, North Korea has rotated thousands of troops through Russia’s war in Ukraine , alongside what is currently the world’s most combat tested drone force — tied with Ukraine’s, of course. Ukrainian defense intelligence reports that some of those troops have begun returning home and moving into instructor roles within the North Korean military . What exactly they are bringing back is harder to pin down from the outside, and reasonable people will disagree on what counts as modern warfare. But it is hard to argue that they are returning with nothing. Rapid investment and advances from North Korea have motivated South Korea to make bold promises to increase its own drone forces. Pyongyang moved from Harop-style airframe prototypes in August 2024 to containerized, truck-mounted launchers in October 2025 — roughly 14 months from concept to deployable hardware. Seoul announced its plan to train drone operators in between. In September 2025, South Korea’s Minister of National Defense Ahn Gyu-back announced a plan to train 500,000 “drone warriors” at the 36th Infantry Division base in Wonju. As part of this program, every conscript would have the opportunity to earn drone piloting credentials during mandatory service. Seoul plans to procure more than 11,000 commercial drones for units in 2026 under a 33 billion won (about $22 million) program the National Assembly approved in December 2025, raised from the Ministry of National Defense’s original 20.5 billion won request. The funds also cover training infrastructure and instructor pipelines. The ministry has required those drones to be built with domestic core components.

Key points

• Since late 2024, North Korea has rotated thousands of troops through Russia’s war in Ukraine , alongside what is currently the world’s most combat tested drone force — tied with Ukraine’s, of course.
• Ukrainian defense intelligence reports that some of those troops have begun returning home and moving into instructor roles within the North Korean military .
• What exactly they are bringing back is harder to pin down from the outside, and reasonable people will disagree on what counts as modern warfare.
• But it is hard to argue that they are returning with nothing.
• Rapid investment and advances from North Korea have motivated South Korea to make bold promises to increase its own drone forces.