(Adnkronos) – South Korean intelligence services believe it is likely that North Korea will deploy additional troops to Russia next month or in August to support the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Moscow had announced that Pyongyang would send thousands of workers to the country to carry out demining and reconstruction work in the Kursk region, on the border with Ukraine.
The news about the military personnel is contained in a report by the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) presented during a closed-door meeting with the Parliamentary Intelligence Committee. Two of the parliamentarians present reported it, according to whom Pyongyang has already started the recruitment process for this future deployment.
According to the same source, North Korea has delivered to Moscow over ten million artillery shells, missiles and long-range weapons in exchange for economic cooperation and technical support from the Russian authorities. The chairman of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Shoigu, declared on June 17, after a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, that the two countries had agreed to send 1,000 demining experts, in addition to another 5,000 workers, to “restore destroyed facilities and infrastructure” in Kursk, after Moscow announced in April that it had completed the reconquest of the territory following the incursion launched by Ukrainian forces in August 2024.
