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North Korean troops have reportedly suffered heavy casualties while fighting for Russia in Ukraine, according to South Korea’s spy agency, which also claimed to have detected signs of Pyongyang preparing to send additional soldiers and kamikaze drones to Moscow.
At least 12,000 North Korean soldiers are fighting in Russia’s nearly three-year-long war against Ukraine, according to Seoul, Washington and Kyiv.
The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on Monday said at least 100 North Korean soldiers have died while another 1,000 suffered injuries in the bordering Kursk region, where Moscow’s forces have been battling a Ukrainian ground incursion since August.
Last week, the South claimed the North’s leader Kim Jong Un was personally overseeing the training of soldiers to be sent to the frontline to fight for Russia.
North Korea has already provided 240mm multiple rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled howitzers, and was seen preparing to produce more suicide drones to be shipped to Russia after Mr Kim guided a test last month, the South’s military said.
“Suicide drones are one of the tasks that Kim Jong Un has focused on,” a JCS official said, adding that the North had expressed its intention to give them to Russia.
Such drones have been widely used in the Ukraine war, and Mr Kim ordered mass production of aerial weapons and an update of military theory and education, citing intensifying global competition.
The US and nine other countries have condemned Pyongyang’s alleged export of ballistic missiles and other military equipment to Russia for use in the Ukraine war in a joint statement on Monday. The North’s direct support for the Russian war effort, they said, marked a “dangerous expansion of the conflict”.
North Korea’s foreign ministry said its relationship with Russia was being “distorted” by the West, calling its alliance with Moscow “normal” and “very effective”.
Along the heavily fortified Korean border, the North has dispatched up to 10,000 soldiers to turn the area into a wasteland and install barriers and barbed wire in recent weeks, though the numbers fell to several hundred over the weekend, the South said.
The JCS released photos that it claimed showed a group of North Korean troops testing an electrified wire fence using a goat. It also noted that there is a possibility that the North will test-fire an intermediate-range hypersonic missile around year-end, ahead of US president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, while continuing to send more garbage balloons to the South.
Additional reporting by agencies
