North Korea has now sent 3,000 soldiers to Russia to support Vladimir Putin's war efforts in Ukraine, according to South Korean MPs.
Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month accused Pyongyang of preparing to send 10,000 soldiers from North Korea to join the Russian forces fighting in his country.
South Korea's spy agency revealed that the North had deployed 1,500 soldiers to Russia's far east last month for training, with plans to send a total of 12,000 troops.
South Korean lawmakers have since updated that figure, saying they were briefed by the spy chief that Pyongyang had sent another 1,500 troops to Russia this month, twice the previous estimate.
“Signs of troops being trained inside North Korea were detected in September and October,” Park Sun-won, a member of a parliamentary intelligence committee, said after the briefing.
“It appears that the troops have now been dispersed to multiple training facilities in Russia and are adapting to the local environment.”
National Intelligence Service (NIS) director Cho Tae-yong told a closed-door parliamentary committee meeting that North Korea plans to send a total of 10,000 troops to Russia by December.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin later said there is evidence that North Korean troops are in Russia but it remained to be seen what they would be doing there.
Mr Austin said it would be “very, very serious” if they are preparing to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine. Kyiv published a video purporting to show dozens of North Koreans lining up to collect Russian military fatigues, without providing further details. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has also cited intelligence about the preparation of two units with possibly up to 12,000 North Korean troops who would take part in the war alongside Russian forces.
"There is evidence that there are DPRK troops in Russia," Mr Austin told reporters in Rome, using North Korea's formal name - the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"What exactly they are doing? Left to be seen. These are things that we need to sort out," he added.
Both North Korea and Russia have previously denied the allegations, calling them “fake news”.
Russia's United Nations ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed South Korea's assertion as well as allegations of Iran supplying Russia with missiles and China providing arms components at a UN Security Council meeting. He accused the West of “circulating scaremongering with Iranian, Chinese and Korean bogeymen, each one of which is more absurd than the one before”.
A Russian government jet landed in North Korea on Wednesday in the latest evidence of continuing cooperation between the two pariah nations following the establishment of a defence pact this year.
The Il-96-300 jet operated by Russia’s Special Flight Squadron departed Vnukovo Airport in Moscow this morning and landed in Pyongyang around 2.30pm (local time), NK News reported, citing data from flight-tracking service Flightradar24.
Seoul this week warned that it could consider supplying weapons to Ukraine in response to Pyongyang sending troops and artillery to pressurize Moscow to not bring North Korean troops.
South Korean officials worry that Russia may reward North Korea by giving it sophisticated weapons technologies that can boost the North’s nuclear and missile programmes that target South Korea.
The South’s spy agency alleged that Pyongyang had sent more than 13,000 containers of artillery, missiles and other conventional arms to Russia since August 2023 to replenish its dwindling weapons stockpiles.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, South Korea has joined US-led sanctions against Moscow and shipped humanitarian and financial support to Kyiv. But it has avoided directly supplying arms to Ukraine in line with its policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflicts.
Nato secretary general Mark Rutte said on Monday that Pyongyang sending troops to Ukraine would significantly escalate the conflict. He previously said the alliance had “no evidence that North Korean soldiers are involved in the fight”.
He said it was “highly worrying” anyway that North Korea was supporting Russia through “weapons supplies, technological supplies, innovation, to support them in the war effort”.
Germany on Wednesday summoned the North’s charge d'affaires over growing concerns of Pyongyang rallying military support for Russia.
"Should reports be true on North Korean soldiers in Ukraine and should North Korea now be supporting the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine with troops, this would be serious and in violation of international law," the German foreign office said.
The US, Japan and South Korea have separately issued a joint statement condemning North Korea for its nuclear and missile developments, deepening military cooperation with Russia and engaging in allegedly illegal activities to fund its weapons programme.
It comes as Russian state media channel Tass, citing the Kremlin defence ministry, claimed that Moscow’s forces had captured two more villages in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, without providing evidence.
The publication reported that Russian forces had captured the villages of Serebrianka and Mykolaivka. DeepState, a Ukrainian organisation that tracks developments on the frontlines and is known to have close ties to the military, suggests that both remain out of Russian hands.
