Dr Daniel Salisbury

RUSI Associate Fellow, Dr Daniel Salisbury said: "Ukrainian sources suggest that the shells Russia has received from the DPRK are dated — some allegedly manufactured in the 1970s and 1980s — and are of poor quality, having a high rate of failure".

In 2009, Thai authorities seized a shipment of 35 tons of weapons from North Korea destined for Iran in a cargo plane that had to make an emergency landing in Bangkok. But a new report says the freer trade could see North Korea making more weapons to fill the terror state orders. Conversely, it will be easier for the country to import nuke tech for its energy and weapon programmes. The report by Dr Daniel Salisbury said the collapse of sanctions said the deepening trade networks would be "bountiful" for North Korea.

Daniel Salisbury is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a senior research fellow at the Department of War Studies at King's College London, and spoke to Newsweek about North Korea's surprisingly common use of offshore workers. He pointed to a similar case in May, in which a woman was accused of helping North Koreans gain freelance IT employment at U.S. companies. Salisbury said that, while the pandemic and the growing prevalence of remote work has made this issue more pertinent, it is far from a new phenomenon. "The DPRK has long used overseas workers to raise revenue which has likely been channeled to its WMD efforts," he said. "Often this labor has involved more traditional jobs such as working in Chinese factories, Russian logging camps, on overseas construction projects or in DPRK restaurants overseas."