North Korea acknowledged for the first time on Monday that it had deployed troops to Russia in support of its war effort against Ukraine. According to Pyongyang, the move was intended to assist Russia in reclaiming its Kursk region, which was captured by Ukrainian forces during a surprise offensive last year.
While U.S., South Korean, and Ukrainian intelligence agencies had previously reported that North Korea sent between 10,000 and 12,000 soldiers to Russia last fall—marking its first involvement in a major conflict since the Korean War ended in 1953—North Korea had remained silent on the matter until now.
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The North Korean announcement came two days after Russia said its troops have fully reclaimed the Kursk region. Ukrainian officials denied the claim.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un decided to send combat troops to Russia under a mutual defense treaty signed by him and Russian President Vladimir Putin in June 2024, the North’s Central Military Commission said in a statement carried by state media. The treaty — considered the two countries’ biggest defense agreement since the end of the Cold War — requires both nations to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked.
The statement cited Kim as saying the deployment was meant to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces.”
“They who fought for justice are all heroes and representatives of the honor of the motherland,” Kim said.Kim said that a monument will soon be erected in Pyongyang to mark North Korea’s battle feats and that flowers will be laid before the tombstones of the fallen soldiers. Kim said the government must take steps to preferentially treat and take care of the families of the soldiers who took part in the war.
The North Korean statement didn’t say how many troops North Korea eventually sent and how many of them had died. But in March, South Korea’s military said that around 4,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded in the Russia-Ukraine war fronts. the South Korean military also assessed at the time that North Korea sent about 3,000 additional troops to Russia earlier this year.
North Korean soldiers are highly disciplined and well trained, but observers say they’ve become easy targets for drone and artillery attacks on Russian-Ukraine battlefields due to their lack of combat experience and unfamiliarity with the terrain. Still, Ukrainian military and intelligence officials have assessed that the North Koreans gained crucial battlefield experience and have been key to Russia’s strategy of overwhelming Ukraine by throwing large numbers of soldiers into the battle for Kursk.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry on Monday urged North Korea to withdraw its troops from Russia immediately, saying the North’s support of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine poses a grave provocation to international security. Spokesperson Koo Byoungsam also called the North’s troops’ deployment “an act against humanity” that has sacrificed young North Korean soldiers for their government.
In a Kremlin meeting Saturday, Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff for Russia’s armed forces, informed Putin of Russia’s regaining of the Kursk region. Gerasimov also confirmed that North Korean soldiers fought alongside Russia to repel Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region and “demonstrated high professionalism, showed fortitude, courage and heroism in battle.”
Ukraine’s General Staff countered that its defensive operation in certain areas in Kursk was continuing.