North Korea will send 25,000 laborers to russia, for them all to only work at one place, the Alabuga Special Economic Zone. This facility is known as the main assembly line of Shahed-136/131 (aka Geran-2) killer drones, which are used daily for long-range strikes on Ukraine.
As confirmed by Japanese news agency NHK, the Korean workers' job will be precisely to help russians in producing Shahed-series drones and gain experience in the meantime in order to later organize production of a similar scale domestically.
Read more: Ukraine's General Staff Confirmed Attack on the Shahed Drone Factory in russia's Tatarstan
Defense Express would like to point out that in this case, unlike with deployments of 12,000 North Korean soldiers for battles in Kursk, simply noting down the addition of extra 25,000 workers does not reflect the magnitude of this agreement between the Juche regime and Kremlin.
According to official figures, russia already had about 25,000 personnel working in Alabuga as of early 2025, aiming to increase the number to 70,000 by 2032. Thus an influx of an additional 25 thousand North Koreans will effectively double the manpower working in the facility, although their competence is an open question. Still, when the transfer is complete, North Koreans will single-handedly turn Alabuga into arguably the largest enterprise of the russian military industrial complex with a staff of roughly 50,000 people.
For comparison, the total personnel at Uralvagonzavod, the main tank manufacturer in russia, numbers 12,000. The Kazan Aircraft Plant (KAPO), where the Tu-160M strategic bomber is assembled and the Tu-22M3 is modernized, counts 8,500 people.
Noteworthy, russia has been systematically expanding the capacity of the Alabuga zone, hence the Kremlin will have the room to accommodate 25,000 laborers from North Korea. Based on estimates earlier provided by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the area of this facility has doubled to 160,000 square meters from 2023 to 2025: an additional five production facilities have been built and four more structures are in progress.
The manufacturing of Shahed-type kamikaze drones, when broken into segments, consists of: production of metal parts, molding of fuselage parts from composite materials, assembly of electronics, power supply system, and the power plant. Apparently, the russians want to scale the volume of production in each of the segments precisely by increasing the labor force involved.
Read more: russia Received from North Korea Dangerous Type-75 MLRS with Mysterious Cluster Rockets
