North Korean troops train at an undisclosed military base, March 6, 2024, in this image from the state-run Korean Central News Agency. (KCNA)
CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea — North Korea may be accelerating plans to send more troops to replace frontline casualties incurred fighting Ukraine on behalf of Russia.
Pyongyang plans to send Moscow an unspecified number of troops to replace those killed, wounded or imprisoned, according to a Friday report from South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The North Korean reinforcements are expected to arrive within two months, according to a New York Times report published Wednesday that cited an unnamed U.S. defense official.
Roughly 12,000 North Koreans may have deployed to Russia as early as October to fight in the nearly 2-year conflict, U.S. and Ukrainian authorities have said.
Of those, around 3,000 were killed or wounded in fighting in Russia’s western front, South Korean lawmakers Lee Seong-kweun and Park Sun-won, citing a closed-door National Intelligence Service briefing, told reporters earlier this month.
News reports indicate the North Koreans are fighting in Kursk, a region of Russia where Ukrainian forces seized territory last summer.
Last month, Ukraine released photos of military identification cards and letters written in Korean that it said belonged to North Korean soldiers. It also released several videos of their interrogation of two North Korean troops captured Jan. 3 during fighting in western Kursk.
One of the North Koreans said he and about 100 other troops arrived in Russia by commercial ferry, not a military transport, and that he did not know who they would be fighting against, according to an interrogation video posted Monday on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s account on social platform X.
“Intelligence data on the movement of such troops to Russian territory, their training and complete information isolation have been confirmed by the prisoners,” the post said. “All the facts about North Korea’s involvement in this war will be established.”
North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency has yet to report on the country’s involvement in the war.
The communist regime’s leader, Kim Jong Un, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, during their June 18 summit in Pyongyang, pledged mutual military aid if either country was at war.
Since then, the U.S. and South Korean militaries have accused the North of providing Russia with ballistic missiles and thousands of containers of artillery shells.
