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Soldiers take part in a demonstration during training of the Air and Amphibious Combat Units of the Korean People’s Army, in this photo released March 16, 2024. (Reuters)
About 1,500 North Korean special forces soldiers are already in Russia for acclimatization and are likely to head to the front line soon
South Korea summoned Russia’s ambassador to Seoul on Monday to criticize Pyongyang’s decision to send thousands of troops to support Moscow’s war in Ukraine, the foreign ministry said, calling for their immediate withdrawal.
About 1,500 North Korean special forces soldiers are already acclimatizing in Russia and are likely to head to the front lines soon, Seoul’s spy agency said on Friday, with additional troops set to leave soon, Pyongyang’s first such overseas deployment.
South Korea, which has long claimed the nuclear-armed North supplied Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine, has expressed alarm at the deployment, which comes after Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a military accord in June.
Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun expressed “Seoul’s serious concern over North Korea’s recent troop deployment to Russia and urged the immediate withdrawal of North Korean forces and an end to related cooperation,” the ministry said in a statement.
Kim told Russia’s ambassador to South Korea, Georgy Zinoviev, that North Korea supplying Russia with weapons and troops for the war in Ukraine “poses a significant security threat not only to South Korea but also to the international community.” It also “stressed that such actions violate multiple UN Security Council resolutions and the UN Charter.”
– S. Koreans in Ukraine? –
On Friday, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) released detailed satellite images it said showed the first deployment of elite North Korean soldiers transferred from Russian warships to Vladivostok. Seoul’s spy agency said that between Oct. 8 and 13, “North Korea transported its special forces to Russia via a Russian Navy transport ship, confirming the beginning of North Korea’s military involvement” in Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
The first contingent of troops, which South Korean media said were from an elite unit of North Korea’s Special Operations Forces, also known as the Storm Corps, are currently stationed at military bases in Russia’s Far East. The special forces “are expected to be deployed on the front lines (of the conflict in Ukraine) as soon as they complete their acclimatization training,” according to the NIS.
The NIS also said on Friday that the North had “provided Russia with more than 13,000 containers of artillery shells, rockets, anti-tank missiles and other lethal weapons” since last August. Pyongyang and Moscow have been allies since North Korea’s founding after World War II and have grown even closer since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky noted intelligence reports that North Korea was training 10,000 troops to support Russia in its fight against Kiev, and said Moscow was relying on the North to offset its significant losses.
Ukrainian media reported earlier this month that six North Korean army officers had been killed in a Ukrainian missile attack on Russian-occupied territory near Donetsk – which South Korea’s defense minister said at the time was “highly likely” to be true. .
(This story was not edited by News18 staff and was published by a syndicated news agency feed – AFP)
