South Korean intelligence says North Korea to deploy more troops to Russia

Pyongyang is likely to send an additional group of soldiers to fight for Russia against Ukraine, the South Korean Yonhap News Agency reported on Thursday, citing a close-door parliamentary briefing from the National Intelligence Service (NIS), Seoul’s spy agency.

According to two deputies privy to Thursday’s briefing, NIS officials believe that North Korea has started recruitment of combat troops to send to Russia and could deploy these troops as early as July or August.

This news follows reports in Russian state-affiliated media outlets last week following Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu’s visit to Pyongyang that North Korea was planning to send 5,000 military construction workers and 1,000 engineers to Russia’s southwestern Kursk region. However, it was not specified at the time that these would be combatants in the conflict.

Citing the NIS, Yonhap added that Pyongyang had already transferred over 10 million artillery shells, missiles and long-range weapons to Russia in exchange for economic and technical support.

Neither the Kremlin nor Pyongyang has commented on these reports.

Russia and North Korea signed a comprehensive partnership agreement in October that reportedly contained a secret clause allowing Pyongyang to send military personnel to the war in Ukraine. Since then, South Korean and Western intelligence agencies have repeatedly documented the involvement of over 10,000 North Korean troops in battle against Ukrainian soldiers.

In late April, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov thanked North Korea’s military for fighting “shoulder to shoulder” with Russian servicemen to achieve the Kursk region’s “liberation” from Ukrainian forces.