North Korea has sent 1,500 special forces – with Russian military uniforms, weapons and forged IDs – to Russia for training ahead of a likely mission to fight against Ukraine, South Korea’s spy agency has said.
Other troops will be dispatched by Pyongyang soon, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) said, amid unconfirmed reports the number could be as high as 12,000 North Korean soldiers.
In a statement, the NIS claimed North Korean officers are already on the ground inside Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.
The agency said, working with Ukrainian intelligence, it had used facial recognition artificial intelligence technology to identify North Korean officers in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region supporting Russian forces firing North Korean missiles.
The deployment of military personnel is a significant expansion in support to Moscow from Pyongyang, which has already provided large amounts of ammunition and missiles.
It has triggered alarm bells in Seoul amid escalating tensions with its reclusive neighbour.
The office of South Korea’s president on Friday 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.
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The developments came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned this week 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”.
A South Korean news agency reported a total of 12,000 soldiers have already been dispatched. This number has not yet been confirmed.
Sharing details of the mission, the South Korean spy agency said in a statement that Russian Navy ships transferred the 1,500 North Korean special operation forces to the Russian port city of Vladivostok, eastern Russia, from 8 October to 13 October.
They are undergoing training and acclimatisation at a number of military bases in the area before likely being moved forward for combat operations against Ukraine, it said.
The spy agency listed the bases hosting the North Korean troops as being in Vladivostok and other Russian sites such as Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Blagoveshchensk.
Backing up the claims, the NIS posted on its website satellite and other photos showing what it calls Russian navy ship movements near a North Korean port and suspected North Korean mass gatherings in Ussuriysk and Khabarovsk in the past week.
If sent to fight in Ukraine, it would be North Korea’s first major participation in a foreign war.
The isolated state has 1.2 million troops, one of the largest militaries in the world, but it lacks actual combat experience.
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Many experts question how much the North Korean troop dispatch would help Russia, citing North Korea’s outdated equipment and shortage of battle experience. Experts also said that North Korea likely received Russian promises to provide security support over the intense confrontations over its advancing nuclear program with the US and South Korea.
In a sign of mounting regional concern, 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 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,” the presidential office said in a statement.
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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 impoverished state cut off road and rail links with South Korea this week. 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.
