The United States said for the first time on Wednesday that it had seen evidence of North Korean troops in Russia, while South Korean lawmakers said about 3,000 soldiers had been sent to support the Kremlin\u2019s war in Ukraine with more to follow. US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking in Rome, said it would be \u201cvery, very serious\u201d if the North Koreans were preparing to fight alongside Russia in Ukraine, as Kyiv has alleged, though he said it remained to be seen what they would be doing there. \u201cThere is evidence that there are DPRK troops in Russia,\u201d Austin told reporters, using North Korea\u2019s formal name, the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea. In Seoul, South Korean lawmakers said that North Korea has sent 3,000 troops to Russia and thousands more were expected to follow. Pyongyang had promised to provide a total of about 10,000 troops, whose deployment was expected to be completed by December, the lawmakers told reporters after being briefed by South Korea\u2019s national intelligence agency. The figure of 3,000 is twice the previous estimate of the number of troops already in Russia. \u201cSigns of troops being trained inside North Korea were detected in September and October,\u201d Park Sun-won, a member of a parliamentary intelligence committee, said after the briefing. \u201cIt appears that the troops have now been dispersed to multiple training facilities in Russia and are adapting to the local environment.\u201d The Ukraine conflict broke out when Russia invaded its neighbour in February 2022 and has since developed into a war of attrition largely fought along front lines in eastern Ukraine, with huge numbers of casualties on both sides. Austin said the alleged North Korean deployment could be further evidence that the Russian military was having problems with manpower. The Kremlin has previously dismissed Seoul\u2019s claims about the North\u2019s troop deployment as \u201cfake news\u201d and a North Korean representative to the United Nations in New York called it \u201cgroundless rumours\u201d at a meeting on Monday. Both Moscow and Pyongyang have also denied weapons transfers, but they have pledged to boost military ties and signed a mutual defence treaty at a summit in June. The latest numbers came after Seoul\u2019s National Intelligence Service said on Friday the North had sent some 1,500 special forces personnel to Russia by ship and they were likely to be deployed for combat in the war in Ukraine after training and acclimatisation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also accused Pyongyang of preparing to send 10,000 soldiers to Russia. On Tuesday he called on his allies to respond to evidence of North Korean involvement in Russia\u2019s war. Families isolated Lee Seong-kweun, a lawmaker on the South Korean committee, said Pyongyang authorities had tried to keep news of the deployment from spreading. \u201cThere are also signs of North Korean authorities relocating and isolating those families (of the troops) in a certain place in order to effectively control them and thoroughly crack down on the rumours,\u201d Lee said, citing the spy agency. Lee also said the agency confirmed that Russia had recruited a \u201clarge number\u201d of interpreters for the North Korean soldiers while training them in the use of military equipment such as drones. \u201cRussian instructors are assessing that the North Korean military has excellent physical attributes and morale but lacks understanding of modern warfare such as drone attacks,\u201d he said. \u201cTherefore there could be many casualties if they are deployed to the front lines.\u201d US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say Russia has suffered more than 600,000 killed or wounded troops in the war in Ukraine. Austin said the alleged North Korean deployment could point to a shortage of Russian recruits. \u201cThis is an indication that he (Russian President Vladimir Putin) maybe even in more trouble than most people realise,\u201d Austin said. On Tuesday the South\u2019s presidential office urged an immediate withdrawal of the North\u2019s troops from Russia, warning that it may consider supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine if military ties between them went too far. In Berlin, Germany summoned North Korea\u2019s charge d\u2019affaires on Wednesday over concerns about the troop deployment. \u201cShould reports be true on North Korean soldiers in Ukraine and should North Korea now be supporting the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine with troops, this would be serious and in violation of international law,\u201d the German foreign ministry said. South Korea\u2019s National Intelligence Service said last week it had been working with the Ukrainian intelligence service and had used facial recognition technology to identify North Korean officers in eastern Ukraine\u2019s Donetsk region supporting Russian forces firing North Korean missiles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States said for the first time on Wednesday that it had seen evidence of North Korean troops in Russia, while South Korean lawmakers…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20541,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}