Imran Khalid

The Syrian civil war is often framed as a proxy battleground for global powers, but one actor’s role has attracted fewer headlines: North Korea. Pyongyang's involvement in the Syrian war — from military assistance to weapons proliferation and covert alliances — reveals a strategic calculation based on Cold War-era alliances and a refusal of Western-led sanctions.

The Assad regime's collapse in late 2024 unraveled decades of secrets, exposing North Korea's level of entanglement in Syria and highlighting a perilous symbiosis between the two countries. North Korea initiated relations with Syria in the 1960s when Pyongyang provided military advisers and air defense systems to assist in Syria's wars with Israel. Their bilateral relations grew quickly under Bashar al-Assad, when North Korea helped Syria achieve nuclear capability. A secret nuclear reactor near Deir el-Zour built with Pyongyang's technical expertise and modeled after North Korea's Yongbyon facility was destroyed by Israel in 2007. The reactor’s destruction, which reportedly killed North Korean scientists who were at the site, marked a turning point, forcing both regimes to pivot toward subtler forms of collaboration.

North Korea began to be a lifeboat for Assad when the Syrian civil war started in 2011. Evading U.N. restrictions through front companies like Cheng Tong Trading Co., Pyongyang provided artillery, chemical weapon precursors and ballistic missile technology. According to a 2018 U.N. report, Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) received 40 illegal........

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