North Korea has begun sending troops to fight with Russia in Ukraine, South Korea’s spy agency has said, as Seoul warned of a “serious security threat.”
The claim comes a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he believed 10,000 North Korean troops could join the war based on intelligence.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol called a security meeting on Friday and said the international community should respond “by all means available.”
According to the spy agency, 1,500 troops have already arrived in Russia — with anonymous sources telling South Korean media the final figure could be closer to 12,000.
This comes as evidence mounts that North Korea is supplying Russia with munitions, most recently evidenced by the recovery of a missile in Ukraine’s Poltava region.
Moscow and Pyongyang have also stepped up their cooperation in recent months. Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wished Russian President Vladimir Putin a happy birthday, calling him his “closest comrade.”
Yoon’s office said Friday’s security meeting was attended by key officials from South Korea’s National Security Office, the Ministry of National Defense and the National Intelligence Service.
“The participants decided not to ignore the situation and to respond to it jointly with the international community using all available means,” the office said.
The NIS’s claim comes days after Ukrainian military intelligence sources said the Russian military was forming a unit of North Koreans.
The BBC has asked the NIS for comment. On Thursday, Ukraine’s intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov claimed that there were nearly 11,000 North Korean infantry soldiers training in eastern Russia to fight in Ukraine.
“They will be ready [to fight in Ukraine] on November 1,” Budanov, who heads Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate, told The Warzone website.
He added that the North Koreans would use Russian equipment and ammunition, and that the first group of 2,600 troops would be sent to Russia’s western Kursk region, where Ukraine has a number of settlements after launching an incursion in August.
Earlier this week, Putin introduced a bill to ratify a military pact he struck with Kim, which pledges that Russia and North Korea will help each other in the event of “aggression” against either country.
South Korea’s intelligence agency said North Korean troops were training at Russian bases in Vladivostok, Ussuriysk, Khabarovsk and Vlagovishchensk.
This appeared to confirm information from a military source in Russia’s Far East, who told BBC Russia this week that “a number of North Koreans have arrived” and were stationed at a military base near Ussuriysk.
South Korea’s intelligence agency also released aerial photographs of Ussuriysk and Khabarovsk, where it said hundreds of North Korean troops had gathered, and another of the North Korean port of Chongjin, where a Russian ship was reportedly seen carrying North Korean soldiers.
The National Intelligence Service said it had found that since August, North Korea had sent 13,000 shipping containers of shells, rockets and anti-tank missiles to Russia.
Russia has supplied up to eight million 122mm and 152mm shells, she added. However, some military experts believe that Russian military units will face difficulties in integrating North Korean forces into their front lines.
Aside from the language barrier, some experts say that the North Korean military has no recent experience in combat operations. “They can guard some sections of the Russian-Ukrainian border, which would free up Russian units to fight elsewhere,” said Valery Ryabikh, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian publication Defense Express.
“I rule out the possibility of these units immediately appearing on the front line.”
As the United States and its allies have moved forward with sanctions, China has expressed growing frustration, particularly over patrols near its borders. Chinese military aircraft have repeatedly intercepted Canadian and Australian aircraft on such missions, sometimes leading to tense encounters.
During this week’s flight, with Voice of America on board, Chinese fighter jets shadowed the Canadian aircraft for hours as it patrolled the East China Sea. But unlike previous incidents, the interactions were not dangerous, Publiccover said.
China’s biggest concern is that some flights “came dangerously close or even entered Chinese airspace,” said Hu Bo, director of the Beijing-based South China Sea Strategic Situational Exploration Initiative.
In 2023, China accused a Canadian CP-140 of entering its airspace near the disputed Diaoyu Islands, known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan. The islands are administered by Japan but also claimed by China and Taiwan.
When asked by VOA, Canadian officials declined to comment on the incident, insisting that all of their operations are conducted in international waters.
Philip Shetler-Jones, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said it’s easy to understand why China wouldn’t want patrols close to its borders.
“I don’t think many countries would want that,” he said. “But that’s different from having a legally acceptable basis to say it’s not right — or a legally acceptable basis to justify the kind of dangerous maneuvers and actions that they’ve taken.”
Despite sanctions efforts, North Korea continues to secure its energy imports, often exceeding UN-imposed limits. Commander Moral acknowledges this, but says the ECC is raising the cost of sanctions evasion.
As an example, Moral cites two North Korea-linked coal ships that South Korea seized earlier this year after the ECC provided intelligence.
But if the ultimate goal is to rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, the results look less encouraging. Recent estimates suggest that North Korea now has enough fissile material to build up to 90 nuclear warheads, and it regularly unveils new advanced missile systems.
Ward believes a shift in strategy may eventually be necessary. “At some point, we may need to reckon with the fact that North Korea has nuclear weapons and figure out how to deal with that,” he said.
Still, even if full sanctions are impossible, Ward argues that there is a case for maintaining them. “The alternative may be to reward bad behavior,” he said.
“As long as the sanctions on North Korea are relatively comprehensive, if largely leaky, many countries will see the North Korea case as a cautionary lesson,” he added.
