(Adnkronos) – Kim Yong-Bok, the highest-ranking North Korean military officer deployed to Russia, is a mysterious figure even in a country that habitually treats its military as celebrities. Kim has rarely been seen – or even mentioned – in public, presumably because his role leading North Korea’s special forces required him to keep a low profile to conceal his identity. The Wall Street Journal spoke about it, according to which the sending to Ukraine of a ‘loyalist’ of the supreme leader Kim Jong-Un, is the latest sign of Pyongyang’s commitment to supporting the Russian ally.
After days of circulating images of a ‘mystery general’ leading the 11,000 North Korean soldiers, officials in Kiev and Seoul confirmed his identity and presence in Russia. He is Kim Yong-bok, formally the deputy chief of staff of the army, who is believed to be tasked with integrating North Korean troops into the Russian army, absorbing battlefield knowledge to bring back home and establishing the pipeline for future deployments. The South Korean government database on the North Korean elite, which includes detailed information on more than 680 officers, only knows Kim by name and title. His age, hometown or any other biographical details are still unknown.
Kim’s name was first mentioned by North Korean state media in 2015, when he was promoted to head of special forces. A year later he was elected to the country’s main political body, the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party. His rise became clearer at a July 2020 meeting where Kim Jong Un gifted commemorative pistols to top generals. In the group photo, the general, gun in hand, is seated just one person away from the North Korean leader. However, his identity slipped back into obscurity until last March, when his current role as the No. 3 figure in the People’s Army was made public.
A three-star general, he is now one of North Korea’s 10 most important military figures, but experts believe a successful campaign in Russia could catapult him even higher. His identity has been kept relatively hidden because the special forces unit he commands – believed to be the largest in the world, with around 200,000 men – is tasked with undertaking covert missions in the event of war on the Korean peninsula, said Jeon Kyung-joo, researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.
North Korea began publicly displaying General Kim after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June, when the two countries agreed to a mutual defense pact. Since then Kim has become one of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s public ‘right-hand men’. The two toured flood-stricken areas, observed special forces training and attended artillery drills. In the images, Kim was almost always shown taking notes standing next to the Supreme Leader. According to Michael Madden, a North Korea expert at the US think tank Stimson Center, “Kim Jong Un is telling the Russians, ‘I’m sending one of my best men. He sits right next to me”.
