North Korean missiles produced in 2024 used in Ukraine

Conflict Armament Research (CAR) has confirmed the continuing use of ballistic missiles manufactured by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) in the conflict in Ukraine. A CAR field investigation team documented the remnants of four different North Korean missiles following a series of attacks reported on 30 July, 5 August, 6 August, and 18 August 2024. On one of these missiles, CAR documented a mark indicating missile production in 2024. This is the first public evidence that missiles produced this year in North Korea are being used in Ukraine.

CAR's discovery of a missile component produced with a 2024 production mark is the first public evidence that missiles produced this year in North Korea are being used in Ukraine.

CAR investigators first documented North Korean missiles in Ukraine in  January  and  February  2024. They established that the model involved in these attacks was either a KN-23 or KN-24. Having compared the remnants recovered in these previous documentations with those of the four missiles recovered in August 2024, CAR can confirm that the missiles used in recent attacks in Ukraine were also manufactured by North Korea. These items are probably also KN-23 or KN-24 missiles, or a variant model.

Having compared the remnants recovered in these previous documentations with those of the four missiles recovered in August 2024, CAR can confirm that the missiles used in recent attacks in Ukraine were also manufactured by North Korea.

Among the remnants of one of the missiles used in the strike on 18 August, CAR field investigators documented two jet vane actuators, both of which bore the same mark indicating that the missile was produced in 2024. CAR understands the mark—the figure ‘113’—to be a reference to 2024 in the Juche calendar. This documentation was the first in which CAR observed a mark indicating production in 2024 on a North Korean missile.

CAR investigators previously documented this marking practice on actuators in  January 2024 , when observing a code mark starting with ‘112’, which refers to production in 2023. CAR has since observed ‘112’ marked on multiple other components, including as a handwritten mark on a label. CAR also documented several components bearing production marks indicating 2023 as their year of manufacture.

CAR understands the mark '113' to be a reference to 2024 in the Juche calendar, used in North Korea.

In June 2024, CAR  briefed  the United Nations Security Council on the use of North Korean ballistic missiles in Ukraine. CAR’s latest field documentation highlights three key observations:

• First, it confirms the continued use of recently manufactured North Korean ballistic missiles in Ukraine.

• Second, the presence of components produced in 2023 and 2024 among missile remnants illustrates North Korea’s robust acquisition network for its ballistic missiles programme, capable of evading multilateral sanctions regimes that have been in place for nearly two decades.

• Third, the discovery of a 2024 production mark on one of the missiles reveals a short period between the production of these ballistic missiles and their use in Ukraine.

Ungrounded and incomplete reporting has thwarted arms control policymaking efforts to understand the dynamics it seeks to control and mitigate. That is precisely the gap that Conflict Armament Research seeks to fill […] the evidence that CAR observed and thoroughly documented firsthand irrefutably establishes that the missile fired on Kharkiv [in January 2024] was indeed of North Korean origin.

CAR’s findings highlight once again the importance of field documentation and monitoring. With the recent expiry of the mandate of the UN Panel of Experts to monitor and report on sanctions violations relating to North Korea, such field evidence is now more important than ever in shedding light on the nature of ongoing defence cooperation between North Korea and the Russian Federation.

The use of such missiles continues to erode global non-proliferation regimes. Any exports of ballistic missiles from North Korea carried out following the introduction of UN embargoes on the country in 2006 represent violations of the sanctions regime. UN Security Council resolutions 1718 (2006), 1874 (2009), and 2270 (2016) prohibit all member states from procuring arms or related materiel from North Korea and prohibit North Korea from exporting arms or related materiel. Security Council resolutions also forbid North Korea from developing its ballistic missile programme, meaning that individuals, entities, and networks involved in the facilitation of these transfers may have committed violations.

CAR field investigators will continue to document any further evidence of the use of North Korean ballistic missiles in Ukraine.

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•  North Korean missile relies on recent electronic components : CAR investigators document a North Korean ballistic missile which includes over 290 non-domestic electronic components

•  Documenting a North Korean missile in Ukraine : CAR investigators document a North Korean ballistic missile that struck Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city.

•  Ukraine iTrace Resource Centre : Explore the weapons and ammunition data documented by CAR in Ukraine and read interactive case studies from our field reporting.

Established in 2011, Conflict Armament Research generates unique evidence on weapon supplies into armed conflicts in order to inform and support effective weapon management and control.

CAR field investigation teams document illicit weapons, ammunition, and related materiel in conflict-affected locations and trace their supply sources. The teams inspect weapons in a variety of situations—whether recovered by state security forces, surrendered at the cessation of hostilities, cached, or held by insurgent forces. They document all items photographically, date and geo-reference the documentation sites, and incorporate contextual interview data gathered from the forces in control of the items at the time of documentation.

CAR occasionally uses information and photographs from social media as background information but does not base its investigations on them, since the provenance of such data is often difficult to verify. Moreover, open-source information does not always provide the detailed physical elements—notably external and internal markings required to trace weapons and ammunition.

For more information on CAR's methodology, go to www.conflictarm.com