SEOUL: North Korean soldiers previously fighting alongside Russia’s army on the Kursk front line appear not to have been engaged in combat since mid-January, South Korea’s spy agency told AFP Tuesday, after Ukraine claimed they had been withdrawn following heavy losses.
“Since mid-January, it appears that the North Korean troops deployed to the Kursk region of Russia have not engaged in combat,” South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said.
“One reason for this may be the occurrence of many casualties, but the exact details are still being monitored,” it added in a statement.
Ukraine’s military said Friday it believed North Korean soldiers deployed to the front line in Kursk had been “withdrawn” after suffering heavy losses.
Western, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence agencies say Pyongyang deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russian forces fighting in its western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a shock cross-border offensive in August.
Neither Pyongyang nor Moscow have officially confirmed the troop deployment, but the two countries signed an agreement, including a mutual defense element, when Russian President Vladimir Putin made a rare visit to the nuclear-armed North last year.
Kyiv captured dozens of border settlements in the operation — the first time a foreign army had crossed into Russian territory since the Second World War — in an embarrassing setback for the Kremlin.
The North Korean deployment was supposed to reinforce Russia’s army and help it expel Ukraine’s troops — but nearly six months on Ukraine still holds swathes of Russian territory.
Ukraine previously said it had captured or killed several North Korean soldiers in Kursk.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has published footage of interrogations with what he said were North Korean prisoners captured by his army on the Kursk front.
Ukrainian officials have said wounded North Korean troops were blowing themselves up with grenades rather than being taken alive.
Kyiv and the West had denounced their deployment as a major escalation in the three-year conflict.
Seoul has previously said that due to losses among its forces, North Korea is preparing for additional deployment to Ukraine.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in December that Pyongyang is “preparing for the rotation or additional deployment of soldiers” to aid Russia’s war effort.
Pyongyang and Moscow have deepened political, military and cultural ties since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In a New Year’s letter, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed Putin and made a possible reference to the war in Ukraine.
He said 2025 would be the year “when the Russian army and people defeat neo-Nazism and achieve a great victory.”