Seoul, South Korea (AP) – North Korea confirmed for the first time on Monday that he sent soldiers to Russia to provide support in his war against Ukraine, ensuring that the deployment was aimed at helping Russia recover the Kursk region, which had fallen to the Ukrainian forces during a surprise incursion last year.
Intelligence officials of the United States, South Korea and Ukraine have said that North Korea deployed between 10,000 and 12,000 soldiers to Russia last autumn, in their first participation in a large-scale armed conflict since the end of the Korean War, from 1950-53. However, it was not until Monday that Pyongyang confirmed the shipment of troops.
The announcement occurred two days after Russia reported that the Kursk region had recovered completely. Ukrainian officials denied the statement.
North Korean president Kim Jong a decided to send Russia’s fighting troops as part of a mutual defense treaty signed with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2024, said the North Korean Central military Commission in a statement released in state media. The treaty, which is considered the largest defense agreement between the two countries since the end of the Cold War, requires that both nations use all the means available to provide immediate military assistance in case any of them is attacked.
According to the statement, Kim said that the deployment was aimed at “annihilating the neo -Nazist occupants Ukrain and releasing said region in collaboration with the Russian Armed Forces.”
“All of them, who fought for justice, are heroes and representatives of the honor of the homeland,” Kim added.
Kim said that a monument will soon be erected in Pyongyang to commemorate the battle feats of North Korea and that flowers will be placed at the tombstones of the fallen soldiers. He pointed out that the Government must take measures to give preference to the treatment and care of the families of the soldiers who participated in the war.
The North Korean statement did not specify the number of soldiers who were finally deployed, as well as how many of them died. But the South Korean army declared last month that around 4,000 North Korean soldiers had died or resulting wounded on war fronts. The South Korean army also evaluated at that time that North Korea sent around 3,000 additional troops to Russia earlier this year.
North Korean soldiers are highly disciplined and well trained, but analysts claim that they have become easy targets for drone and artillery attacks due to their lack of experience in combat and ignorance of the land. Even so, Ukrainian military and intelligence officials have evaluated that North Koreans acquired crucial experience on the battlefield and have been key to Russia’s strategy to overwhelm Ukraine with a large number of soldiers in the battle by Kursk.
During a meeting on Saturday at the Kremlin, Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, informed Putin about the recovery of the Kursk region. Gerasimov also confirmed that the North Koreans fought with Russia to expel Ukrainian troops in the region and “demonstrated high professionalism, showed strength, courage and heroism in battle.”
The General Staff of Ukraine replied that its defensive operation in certain areas of Kursk continued to go.
If confirmed, Russia’s victory in Kursk would deprive Ukraine of a key advantage in the efforts headed by the United States for negotiating the end of a war of more than three years by exchanging his advances for some of the territories occupied by Russia in Ukraine.
On Saturday, US President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in the city of Vatican outside Pope Francis’s funeral to discuss a possible high fire agreement. Shortly after arriving in Rome on Friday, Trump said on social networks that Ukraine and Russia should meet for “very high level conversations” about the end of the war. But less than 24 hours later, Trump said he doubted Putin’s willingness to end the conflict.
During a meeting last month with a senior Russian security official, Serguéi Shoigu, Kim expressed his unwavering support for Russia. According to the state press, Kim and Shoigu reaffirmed their commitment to maintain the Mutual Defense Treaty. Russia’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrei Rudenko, told the Russian media that governments discussed a possible visit from Kim to Moscow.
North Korea has also been supplying a lot of conventional weapons to Russia. South Korea, the United States and its partners fear that Russia can reward North Korea transferring the development of high -tech weapons that can drastically improve its nuclear weapons program. North Korea is planned to also receive economic and other assistance from Russia.
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This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.
