North Korea has sent more troops to Russia, though the size of the deployment remains unclear, South Korean media reported on Thursday, citing the country’s intelligence agency.
The additional troops have been sent to the battlegrounds in Russia’s Kursk region, the reports said. Russian forces are fighting Ukrainian troops who thrust across the border into the western Russia region.
The spokesperson’s office at the National Intelligence Service (NIS) did not answer telephone calls seeking comment.
North Korea has deployed more than 11,000 troops to Russia to fight in the Ukraine war, the NIS has previously said. Ukraine and Western experts say Russian forces have also used North Korean weapons.
Neither the North nor Russia have officially acknowledged the troop deployment or the weapons supply.
Heavy Losses
Last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed North Korean forces had suffered heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region.
Zelenskyy said more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed and wounded in the region, adding that North Korean troops were taking extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and in some instances were being executed by their own forces.
In December 2024, a South Korean lawmaker, citing the country’s spy agency, said that more than 100 North Korean troops deployed to Russia had been killed and another 1,000 wounded in intense fighting with Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region.
The heavy losses were attributed to the lack of experience by North Korean troops in drone warfare and unfamiliarity with the open terrain where they are taking part in the battle, a member of parliament Lee Seong-kweun said.
Lee said this after a closed-door briefing by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to parliament.
The discrepancy in the estimate of the troops killed from that made by a U.S. military official who cited several hundred casualties is because of the relatively conservative analysis by the NIS, Lee added.
(With inputs from Reuters)
