North Korea seems to have sent more troops to Russia to support his war against Ukraine, says Seoul | News, sports, jobs

Seul, South Korea (AP)-the South Korean Espionage Agency said today that North Korea seems to have sent additional troops to Russia, after their soldiers deployed on the Russian-Ukraine fronts suffered strong casualties.

The National Intelligence Service said in a brief statement that I was trying to determine exactly how many north Korea troops has deployed in Russia.

The NIS also evaluated that the North Korean troops were redistributed on the fronts of the Kursk region of Russia in the first week of February, after an informed temporary retreat from the area. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a speech on February 7, confirmed a new Ukrainian offensive in Kursk and said that North Korea’s troops were fighting with the Russian forces there.

North Korea has been supplying a large number of conventional weapons to Russia, and the past fall also sent around 10,000-12,000 troops to Russia, according to US intelligence officials, South Koreans and Ukraine. North Korea soldiers are very disciplined and well trained, but observers say they have become easy targets with drones and artillery against Russian-Ukraine battlefields due to their lack of combat experience and lack of familiarity with the land.

In January, the NIS said that some 300 North Korean soldiers had died and another 2,700 had been injured. Zelenskyy previously put the number of North Koreans dead or injured in 4,000, although US estimates were lower in around 1,200.

Today early, the Joongang Ilbo newspaper of South Korea, citing unidentified sources, reported that 1,000-3,000 additional North Korean soldiers were deployed in Kursk between January and February.

South Korea, the United States and their partners are concerned that Russia can reward North Korea transferring high -tech weapons technologies that can abruptly improve their nuclear weapons program. North Korea is expected to also receive economic assistance and another type of Russia.

During the conversations in Saudi Arabia last week, Russia and the United States agreed to start working to finish the war and improve their diplomatic and economic ties. Ukrainian officials were not present in conversations. That marked an extraordinary change in the foreign policy of the United States under President Donald Trump and a clear deviation from the efforts led by the United States to isolate Russia about his war in Ukraine.

Observers say that North Korean leader Kim Jong one could send more troops to Russia to win more Russian assistance before the war ends.

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This story has been edited to reflect that NIS’s statement was published on Thursday, not Wednesday.