Engineering/support was the pretext for all the Chinese, Cubans, Nepalese, etc. that have ended up as frontline cannon fodder. Both Russia and NK are incentivized to downplay it until the troops are already there so I'd remain weary.
But they do have adequate training time as well as a lifetime of experience blindly following the orders of piece of shit leaders so I don't like where this is going. There needs to be consequences on the table for NK that avoid them flooding Ukraine with tens/hundreds of thousands of soldiers (which would be easy given they have over a million soldiers that don't have shit to do).
One upshot is they are still gated by equipment requirements. But there is actually a vague possibility that NK just bleeds their army dry in exchange of Jong Un getting a reach around from Putin.
Putin pledged military aid to South Korea's greatest enemy, but then throws a hissy fit when South Korea considers military aid fir Ukraine in response. I'm sick of seeing the world being run by idiotic toddlers.