Published December 23,2024
Subscribe
More than 1,000 North Korean troopers have been killed or wounded in Russia’s warfare with Ukraine, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) stated on Monday.
The new determine follows a report by Seoul’s spy company to MPs final week, which stated not less than 100 North Korean troopers had been killed since getting into fight in December.
Pyongyang has despatched hundreds of troops to strengthen the Russian army, together with to the Kursk border area, the place Ukrainian forces seized territory earlier this 12 months.
“Through various sources of information and intelligence, we assess that North Korean troops who have recently engaged in combat with Ukrainian forces have suffered around 1,100 casualties,” the JCS stated in a press release.
“We are particularly interested in the possibility of additional deployments” of North Korean troopers to assist Russia’s warfare effort, the JCS added.
Pyongyang is reportedly “preparing for the rotation or additional deployment of soldiers”, the JCS stated.
Intelligence additionally means that the nuclear-armed North is “producing and providing self-destructible drones” to Russia to additional help Moscow in its struggle towards Ukraine, it added.
The North was additionally supplying “240mm rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled artillery” for the Russian military, the JCS stated.
Seoul’s army famous that North Korea was aiming to modernise its standard warfare capabilities primarily based on fight expertise within the Russia-Ukraine warfare.
“This could lead to an increase in the North’s military threat toward us,” it stated.
The newest findings align with a report by the National Intelligence Service, which knowledgeable lawmakers that “Russia might offer reciprocal benefits” for North Korea’s army contributions, together with “modernising North Korea’s conventional weaponry”.
NEW BORDER FENCE
North Korea and Russia have strengthened their army ties since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A landmark defence pact between Pyongyang and Moscow, signed in June, got here into drive this month.
Experts say North Korean chief Kim Jong Un is eager to amass superior know-how from Russia and battle expertise for his troops.
Pyongyang on Thursday lashed out at what it referred to as “reckless provocation” by the United States and its allies for a joint assertion criticising North Korea’s help for Russia’s warfare in Ukraine, together with the deployment of troops.
South Korea and Ukraine introduced final month that they might deepen safety cooperation in response to the “threat” posed by the deployment of North Korean troops, however there was no point out of potential arms shipments from Seoul to Kyiv.
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol stated earlier in November that Seoul was “not ruling out the possibility of providing weapons” to Ukraine, which might mark a major shift in its long-standing coverage barring the sale of weapons to nations in energetic battle.
North Korea’s army was additionally seen developing a brand new fence stretching 40 kilometres (25 miles) alongside the border with the South, testing electrical barbed-wire fences with what gave the impression to be goats.
A photograph supplied by the JCS reveals a North Korean soldier holding what seems to be a goat in entrance of barbed-wire fences.
The North’s border safety reinforcement had been underway “for eight months with as many as 10,000 soldiers mobilised,” a army official advised reporters.
The stepped-up safety measures purpose to “prevent defections by North Korean civilians and soldiers southward”, the JCS stated within the report.
Source: www.anews.com.tr