North Korea is no longer just supporting Russia with weapons and ammunition for the Ukraine war. It was reported overnight that North Korea is now sending actual soldiers to Russia to train and then deploy to Ukraine to support Russian efforts to win their war.
The source of this information is the intelligence apparatus in South Korea.
Here’s more via NBC News:
North Korea has shipped 1,500 special forces troops to Russia’s far east for training and acclimatizing at local military bases and will likely be deployed for combat in the war in Ukraine, South Korea’s spy agency said on Friday.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) also said it had been working with 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.
In more than 13,000 containers, North Korea has shipped artillery rounds, ballistic missiles and anti-tank rockets to Russia since August last year, the agency said, based on the remnants of weapons recovered from the battle front 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, Yoon’s office said.
“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,” it said.
Yoon’s office said South Korea, together with its allies, has 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.
The 1,500 special forces troops is said to be only the first deployment that will soon rise to 12,000 troops from North Korea:
BREAKING | North Korea is sending 12,000 troops, including special forces, to support Russia in its war against Ukraine.
According to the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS), North Korea has decided to send four brigades to Ukraine and has begun deployment.
— InsideNK/GeoPolitics (@inside_nk) October 18, 2024
This is quite alarming on multiple levels. It’s obviously horrible for Ukraine itself and it means that Russia’s war is just going to continue on unhindered for who knows how long. But it’s also bad for South Korea and the world at large because Russia is clearly helping enrich an unstable nuclear power in order to get all of this support. Because of this it’s quite possible the world will see a horrible war in South Korea’s future and that will certainly draw in US soldiers to help defend an ally.
