North Korea has deployed 12,000 soldiers to support Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine – with Pyongyang’s troops given fake Russian IDs, South Korea’s spy agency has reportedly said.
The move – if confirmed – would be a significant expansion in support to Moscow from Pyongyang, which has already provided large amounts of ammunition and missiles.
It is also triggering alarm bells in Seoul amid escalating tensions between South Korea and its reclusive neighbour.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS), the chief intelligence agency of South Korea, said today that Russian military vehicles had moved around 1,500 North Korean special forces troops to Russia.
The North Korean troops received Russian military uniforms, weapons and fake Russian IDs, the spy agency added.
South Korea also says it has used artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition technology to identify North Korean soldiers who have been deployed to Russia.
North Korea has also sent artillery shells, anti-tank rockets and ballistic missiles to Russia, the NIS has said.
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The spy agency added North Korean missile technical officers are on the frontlines supporting Russia’s use of missiles provided by Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, the office of South Korea’s president on Friday – without confirming numbers – warned that the deployment of North Korean forces to Russia was a grave security threat to the international community and said it would respond with all available means.
It comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed this week that North Korea was preparing to deploy 10,000 soldiers to join Russia’s invasion, calling any North Korean involvement “the first step to a world war”.
On Friday, Yonhap, a major South Korean news agency, reported its country’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) has found that 12,000 North Korean troops have already left the country.
The NIS did not immediately confirm the report.
But South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held an unscheduled security meeting with key intelligence, military and national security officials to discuss North Korean troops’ involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The presidential office did not immediately confirm whether South Korea has officially verified the North Korean troop deployment.
“The participants … shared the view that the current situation where Russia and North Korea’s closer ties have gone beyond the movement of military supplies to actual dispatch of troops is a grave security threat not only to our country but to the international community,” it said in a statement.
Ukraine’s president, speaking after a meeting at the headquarters of the NATO military alliance on Thursday, revealed that “tactical personnel” as well as military officers from the totalitarian state were already on the ground in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
The intelligence has yet to be confirmed by Western officials but the UK, the US and other allies are understood to be monitoring the situation closely.
North Korea has been ramping up support for its close ally Russia in return for economic assistance and also likely military technology and new military capabilities.
The two nations earlier this year signed a defence agreement during a visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to see North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un in Pyongyang.
At the same time, North Korea has turned increasingly aggressive towards South Korea, this week declaring its neighbour to be a “hostile nation”.
Kim accuses Seoul of colluding with Washington to seek the collapse of his regime, and has pushed for a clear break with decades of policy engagement with the South, including the scrapping of unification as a goal.
The reclusive state cut off road and rail links with South Korea. Those actions underscored “not only the physical closure but also the end of the evil relationship with Seoul,” the state news agency KCNA quoted the North Korean leader as saying.
