Soldiers participate in a demonstration during the training of the Korean People’s Army combat units in this picture released on March 16, 2024 / KCNA / VIA REUTERS
JAPAN TIMES | Published February 28, 2025
Seoul –
North Korea has sent more soldiers to Russia and redeployed several to the front line in Kursk, Seoul’s spy agency said on Thursday.
South Korean and Western intelligence agencies have said that more than 10,000 soldiers from the reclusive state were sent to Russia last year to help it fight a shock Ukrainian offensive into the Kursk border region.
Seoul said earlier this month North Korean soldiers previously fighting alongside Russia’s army on the Kursk front line had not been engaged in combat since mid-January.
Ukraine also said they had been withdrawn following heavy losses.
However, an official from Seoul’s National Intelligence Agency said on Thursday they had been “redeployed” there.
That came alongside “some additional troop deployments appearing to have taken place,” the official added.
“The exact scale is still being assessed,” the official said.
Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang have confirmed the deployment.
The two countries signed an agreement, including a mutual defense clause, when Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to the nuclear-armed North last year.
“This is, I think, a wake-up call for everyone globally to understand that the security of Europe and the Indo-Pacific has never been more directly linked than it is today,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry spokesman said in response to the reports.
“We don’t think that the reaction of the international community has been sufficient,” spokesman Georgiy Tykhy told reporters.
Ukraine has previously said it had captured or killed several North Korean soldiers in Kursk.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has released footage of interrogations with who he said were North Korean prisoners captured by the Ukrainian army there.
Seoul’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper also published an interview this month with a North Korean soldier who described “brutal” fighting on the front line.
The soldier, who was visibly wounded, told the paper that many of his fellow North Korean soldiers had been killed by drones and artillery fire.
“Everyone who joined the army with me is dead,” he said.
Pyongyang and Moscow have deepened political, military and cultural ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed Putin in a New Year’s letter and made a possible reference to the war in Ukraine.
He said 2025 would be the year “when the Russian army and people defeat neo-Nazism and achieve a great victory.”
North Korean state media reported on Wednesday that Kim had visited a major military academy, urging troops to harness the “actual experiences of modern warfare.”
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SOURCE: www.japantimes.co.jp
RELATED: Russia covertly transported North Korean troops to remote port in far east last year, claims report
The findings by the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies corroborate earlier claims made by the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) last year
A Russian landing ship comes and goes from the port of Dunai, in Russia’s far east, on November 30. Researchers have been tracking Russian ships believed to be used for transfers of North Korean troops.
FIRSTPOST | Published February 28, 2025
Researchers at a top US think tank have concluded after analysing satellite images that Russia may have covertly transported North Korean troops to one of its secluded ports in the far east in October and November last year.
The findings by the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies corroborate earlier claims made by the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) last year, alleging transfer of North Korean troops to Russia in the wake of the Ukraine war.
Sam Lair, a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, was quoted by CNN as saying, “I don’t think that the Russians or the North Koreans want these transfers caught on camera.”
“The secrecy element is quite remarkable.”
According to the researchers, two Russian naval ships docked at Dunai port, located in a remote part of Russia’s Far East. Russians may have deliberately avoided the nearby Vladivostok port, where civilian footfall is high, to maintain the secrecy of the transfer.
According to the report, the North Korean troops may have boarded the Russian ships at night to avoid detection. However, the Russians remained less careful at the Dunai port. Researchers could spot Russian ship Nikolay Vilkov docked at the port on October 17, along with a large crane. By October 20, the crane had vanished, signalling the completion of the troop transfer.
“This is an isolated place where they can do these exchanges, where people aren’t going to notice… (where) their own citizens, and folks in the intelligence community might not notice,” Lair said.
According to the CNN report, each landing ship is believed to have the capacity to hold several hundred soldiers.
According to claims by Western observers, some 12,000 North Korean troops are believed to have been sent to Russia to aid Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine.
Another claim made by Ukrainian intelligence in January this year hinted at 4,000 injuries or fatalities among these soldiers.
Although both Russia and North Korea have not confirmed the presence of North Korean troops in the combat zone, Kyiv claims to have captured at least of two of them from the front lines. Western media reports earlier said Russia may have deployed the North Koreans in its Kursk region, which remains partially occupied by Ukrainian soldiers following lightning incursion late October last year.
(With inputs from agencies)
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