SEOUL: North Korea has shipped 1,500 special forces troops to Russia’s Far East for training and acclimatising at local military bases and will likely be deployed for combat in the war in Ukraine, South Korea’s spy agency said on Friday (Oct 18).
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said it had been working with the Ukrainian intelligence service and had used facial recognition artificial intelligence technology to identify North Korean officers in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region supporting Russian forces firing North Korean missiles.
North Korea has shipped artillery rounds, ballistic missiles and anti-tank rockets to Russia in more than 13,000 containers since August last year, the agency said, based on the remnants of weapons recovered from the battlefront in Ukraine.
In all, more than eight million artillery and rocket rounds have been shipped to Russia, it said.
“The direct military cooperation between Russia and North Korea that has been reported by foreign media has now been officially confirmed,” the spy agency said in a statement.
Earlier, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called an unscheduled security meeting with key intelligence, military and national security officials to discuss North Korean troops’ involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“The participants … shared the view that the current situation where Russia and North Korea’s closer ties have gone beyond the movement of military supplies to actual dispatch of troops is a grave security threat not only to our country but to the international community,” Yoon’s office said.
It said South Korea, together with its allies, had been closely tracking North Korea’s troop dispatch to Russia from the initial stages.
South Korea will respond to the North’s activities with all available means, it added, without elaborating on what actions it might take.
South Korea, which has emerged as a major global arms exporter, selling fighter jets, mechanised howitzers and missiles, has come under pressure from some Western allies including Washington to help arm Ukraine with lethal weapons but has stopped short of openly doing so.
The US House of Representatives intelligence committee chairman cited the South Korean report in a letter to President Joe Biden calling for an immediate classified briefing to the panel on the issue.
“These (North Korean) troops movements, if true, are alarming and are an extreme escalation of the conflict in Ukraine,” wrote US Representative Mike Turner. “They require an immediate response from the United States and our NATO allies to avoid a widening conflict.”
The White House National Security Council could not confirm reports that North Korean troops were fighting for Russia, a spokesperson said, but if true, “this would mark a dangerous development in Russia’s war against Ukraine”.
Ramon Pacheco Pardo of King’s College in London said despite the gravity of the development, it may not be heavy enough to shift Seoul’s position.
“When it comes to South Korea, I think that its red line is Russia providing support to North Korea that allows Pyongyang to substantially improve its nuclear and missile programme, not North Korea’s support for Russia.”
Source: CNA
