North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been mass producing missiles that contain modern western technology and then shipping the weaponry Russia to help fuel Putin's war in Ukraine, experts have revealed.
A North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on January 2, an United Nations (UN) report revealed last week.
Since January, dozens of North Korean missiles have been fired by Russia into Ukraine, killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 70, the BBC reported.
An investigation has since revealed that within just a matter of months North Korea managed to illicitly obtain 'vital' weapons parts, sneak them into the country, assemble their missiles and secretly ship them to Russia.
Experts suspect North Korea has been supplying the weaponry in exchange for Moscow's technical assistance for Pyongyang's budding spy satellite programme.
North Korea has been under UN sanctions for its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes since 2006, with those measures having been strengthened over the years.
Last year, North Korea conducted a record number of missile tests - in defiance of UN sanctions and despite warnings from Washington and Seoul - having declared itself as an 'irreversible' nuclear weapons state in 2022.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London has been tracking the shipment of North Korean weapons to Russia ever since Kim Jong and Putin met in Russia last September to strike a suspected arms deal, according to the BBC.
Satellite imagery has reportedly captured four Russian cargo ships, loaded with hundreds of containers, shuttling between North Korea and a Russian military port.
RUSI experts estimate that North Korea has sent about 7,000 containers, filled with over one million ammunition shells and grad rockets, to Russia.
The estimates are reportedly supported by US, UK and South Korean intelligence, despite Russia and North Korea both having denied the trade.
Experts have also cited concern over the alleged sophistication of North Korea's weapons programme, alleging that the Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile found in Kharkiv in January is 'Pyongyang's most sophisticated short-range missile'.
UN monitors say the Hwasong-11 series ballistic missiles were first publicly tested by Pyongyang in 2019.
The missiles are reportedly capable of travelling up to 700km (435 miles) and 'extremely cheap' to make, meaning an army could purchase larger quantities and fire more missiles in an attempt to overwhelm air defences.
However, more concerning to experts is that the missile launched into Kharkiv was 'bursting with the latest foreign technology', officials told the broadcaster.
Many of the electronic parts featured in the missile had been manufactured in the US and Europe within the last few years. It even contained a computer chip made as recently as March 2023.
The computer chips used in modern weapons are often the same chips used in phones, washing machines and cars. Manufacturers will sell billions of chips to distributors, who then sell them to other firms.
Joseph Byrne, a North Korea expert at RUSI, suspects that Pyongyang used stolen cash to create shell companies in Hong Kong or other central Asian countries to buy the parts, which are then shipped to North Korea, usually over the Chinese border.
Pyongyang then uses the parts to mass produce weapons at its factories, which North Korean weapons expert Dr Jeffrey Lewis says are 'operating at full-tilt'.
Dr Lewis, who has been studying North Korean factories through satellite images, suspects the factories can produce a few hundred weapons each year.
Moscow, which denies weapons trade with Pyongyang, has violated UN sanctions by buying North Korean weapons.
Russia in March vetoed the annual renewal of the UN sanctions monitors - known as a panel of experts - that has for 15 years monitored enforcement of UN sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Russia's veto effectively ended official UN monitoring of sanctions imposed on the isolated country for its pursuit of banned nuclear and weapons programmes.
Kim Song, North Korea's ambassador to the UN, said on Sunday that efforts to set up a new panel to monitor sanctions against his country would end in failure.
'The hostile forces may set up the second and third expert panels in the future but they are all bound to meet self-destruction with the passage of time,' envoy Kim Song said in an English statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.
The dissolution of the UN panel after Moscow's veto, he said, was a 'judgement made by history on an illegal, plot-breeding organisation...to stamp out a sovereign state's right to existence'.
The envoy expressed gratitude towards Moscow last month, stating that Pyongyang 'highly appreciates the Russian Federation's veto' that blocked the renewal of the expert sanctions panel, 'as an independent exercise of the right to international justice and impartiality'.