'Troop Movement Has Begun': North Korea Sending 12,000 Soldiers To Help Russia In Ukraine War | Video

North Korea has decided to send thousands of troops to support Russia in its war against Ukraine, South Korean media reported Friday, citing the country’s spy agency.

“The National Intelligence Service said it has learned that the North has recently decided to send four brigades of 12,000 soldiers, including special forces, to the war in Ukraine,” Yonhap news agency said. “The movement of North Korean troops has already begun,” a National Intelligence Service (NIS) source told Yonhap.

1,500 special forces soldiers to Russia

Releasing detailed satellite images, Seoul’s spy agency said that North Korea has deployed an initial contingent of 1,500 special forces soldiers to Russia’s Vladivostok and will send more soon. The NIS said in a statement it had “detected from the 8th to the 13th (of October), North Korea transported its special forces to Russia via a Russian Navy transport ship, confirming the start of North Korea’s military participation.”

The agency said that the security assessment came after President Yoon Suk Yeol convened an emergency security meeting amid mounting speculation that the North may be providing its soldiers to fight Russia’s war in Ukraine. A video of North Korean soldiers training in Russia was making rounds on social media. However, News18 could not independently verify the footage.

North Korea was training 10,000 soldiers

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday he had intelligence reports that North Korea was training soldiers to support Russia in its fight against Kyiv. “They are preparing on their land, 10,000 soldiers, but they didn’t move them already to Ukraine or to Russia,” Zelensky said after meeting NATO defence ministers.

Zelensky suggested that Russia is relying on North Korean troops to compensate for its substantial losses, as many young Russians seek to avoid conscription. South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol convened an emergency security meeting Friday on the move by Pyongyang. The meeting said that the close military ties between Russia and North Korea had gone “beyond the transfer of military supplies to actual troop deployments”.

This development poses “a significant security threat not only to our country but also to the international community,” the president’s office said in a statement. Pyongyang and Moscow have been allies since North Korea’s founding after World War II and have drawn even closer since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Seoul and Washington long claiming that Kim Jong Un has been sending weapons for use in Ukraine.

Russia-North Korea Relations

Earlier in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to Pyongyang, with the two countries signing a mutual defence treaty, fuelling speculations of further arms transfers — which violate rafts of UN sanctions on both countries. Earlier this month, Ukrainian media reported that six North Korean military officers were killed in a Ukrainian missile attack on Russian-occupied territory near Donetsk on October 3.

Seoul’s defence minister, Kim Yong-hyun, told lawmakers at the time that it was “highly likely” that the report was true. Experts said that moving from supplying shells to soldiers to Russia was the logical next step. “For North Korea, which has supplied Russia with many shells and missiles, it’s crucial to learn how to handle different weapons and gain real-world combat experience,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies.

(With agency inputs)