The National Intelligence Service of South Korea claims that it assesses the size of the deployment of Pyongyang to the war in Ukraine.
The South Korea intelligence agency has evaluated that North Korea sent more soldiers to Russia after undergoing heavy victims on the front line of the war in Ukraine, local media reported.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) said in a statement to the South Korean media that Pyongyang had redeployed troops to the front in the Kursk Russia region in early February following a one-month lull.
“It seems that there has been a deployment of additional troops, but their size is still being examined,” said the NIS quoted by the Yonhap news agency funded by the state of South Korea.
Seoul’s intelligence assessment followed an analysis last year that Pyongyang had sent around 11,000 soldiers to Russia when he supported the invasion of Moscow.
Defense analysts have suggested that North Korean troops are probably easy targets for Ukrainian drone and artillery attacks due to their lack of combat experience and their inability to communicate with their Russian superiors.
Ukrainian commanders on the ground also reported that Russian forces used North Korean troops to direct the attacks and ordered them to commit suicide rather than being captured.
In January, the NIS estimated that 300 North Korean soldiers were killed and 2,700 others injured in combat.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy estimated the number of North Koreans killed or injured at 4,000.
North Korean chief Kim Jong Une and Russian President Vladimir Putin accelerated their military cooperation since he held rare consecutive heights in 2023 and last June.
In November, Kim officially ratified a mutual defense treaty with Russia which forces the two countries to provide immediate military assistance using “all means” necessary if one or the other faces “assault”.
