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North Korea has sent around 3,000 troops to help Russia in its war against Ukraine, South Korean lawmakers said Wednesday, after being briefed by South Korea’s spy agency.
The total number of North Korean troops sent to Russia is expected to reach 10,000 by December, the lawmakers said, citing the National Intelligence Service.
According to Lee Sung Kwon, a member of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee, the NIS reported that Russian army drill instructors found North Korean soldiers to have high stamina and morale but lack an understanding of modern warfare, such as drone attacks.
Photo provided by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service on Oct. 18, 2024, shows satellite imagery taken on Oct. 16 of a military facility in Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East where the agency says about 240 North Korean troops have been deployed. (Yonhap/Kyodo)
Lee, citing the spy agency, said that if North Korean troops are actually deployed in the war, many of them could lose their lives.
The agency has also confirmed that the Russian military is recruiting a large number of interpreters for the North Korean troops and providing them with specialized training, including instruction on how to use military equipment such as drones.
Russia has denied North Korea dispatched its soldiers to support the war. Pyongyang has not commented on the matter.
The NIS said last Friday that North Korea had deployed 1,500 special forces troops between Oct. 8 and 13 to Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East.
The spy agency’s Wednesday briefing followed a statement from a senior official in the South Korean presidential office the day before, saying the country is considering supplying weapons to Ukraine as part of “phased measures” in response to the growing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia.
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