Russia to honour North Korean servicemen in Kursk with monuments and street names

Russia plans to commemorate North Korean soldiers who fought alongside its forces against Ukraine by naming streets and erecting monuments in their honour in the southwestern Kursk region, Alexander Matsegora, the ambassador to Pyongyang, said during a reception at the embassy, state-owned Korean Central News Agency reported on Friday.

The move, a symbolic reflection of the alignment between the Kremlin and Kim Jung Un’s dictatorship, will honour the estimated 600 soldiers who died fighting in Kursk, which was under partial Ukrainian control from August to March.

“Beautiful monuments to the Korean heroes who performed feats to be kept forever in the hearts of the Russian people will be built,” Matsegora said. He also passed on Vladimir Putin’s appreciation of “bravery, self-sacrificing spirit and fighting efficiency of the Korean comrades-in-arms”.

Reports first emerged in October that North Korean troops were fighting in the Kursk region, though neither Moscow nor Pyongyang confirmed them at the time. That month, Russia’s State Duma ratified a comprehensive partnership treaty with Pyongyang. According to the Wall Street Journal, the document contains a secret clause allowing North Korea to send military personnel to the war in Ukraine.

The Wall Street Journal reported in February that North Korean soldiers captured by Ukraine were unaware of the war they were being sent to, believing instead that they would be fighting South Koreans.

On 26 April, Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, announced Kursk’s “liberation” from Ukrainian forces. He thanked the North Korean military, which he said had acted “shoulder to shoulder” with Russian servicemen in the fighting there.