More than 6,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or injured while fighting alongside Russia’s forces in Kursk where Ukraine has presence due to its incursion, the British ministry of defence has assessed.
“Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) forces have highly likely sustained more than 6,000 casualties in offensive combat operations against Ukrainian forces in the Russian oblast of Kursk,” the UK ministry of defence said in its latest assessment on Sunday, using North Korea’s official name.
“The total casualties amount to more than half of the approximately 11,000 DPRK troops initially deployed to the Kursk region,” the defence ministry said.
North Korea has been a staunch ally of Russia’s military invasion in Ukraine and also helped the Russian troops fight back audacious Ukrainian attack in Kursk oblast where Kyiv’s forces entered in August last year.
While neither Russia nor Ukraine provides official figures for the number of combat casualties, North Korea made a rare admission in April this year that it sent troops for deployment inside Kursk to support Russia.
The ministry added that North Korea’s significant casualty rates “have almost certainly been sustained primarily through large, highly attritional dismounted assaults”. The ministry said North Korea has deployed only a limited number of additional troops in Kursk, citing the open-source reports, showing that the hermit kingdom has suffered severe losses on the battlefield.
The MoD also pointed to the latest high-level visit by Russia’s former defence minister and security council secretary Sergei Shoigu, earlier this month.
“Shoigu has highly likely been a key interlocutor with DPRK regarding DPRK’s support to Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,” it said, adding that Mr Shoigu met with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the second time in less than three months.
In the meeting, Mr Kim affirmed that North Korea will “unconditionally support the stand of Russia and its foreign policies in all the crucial international political issues including the Ukrainian issue”, the official Korean Central News Agency said.
According to the US, South Korean and Ukraine intelligence officials, North Korea dispatched 10,000-12,000 troops to Russia last fall in its first participation in a major armed conflict since the 1950-53 Korean War.
“DPRK operations have thus far been confined to the Kursk region. Any decision to deploy into internationally recognised sovereign Ukrainian territory in support of Russian forces, would almost certainly require sign-off from both Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un,” the UK ministry of defence said.
South Korean authorities recently said North Korea sent around 3,000 additional troops to Russia earlier this year. North Korea has also been supplying a vast amount of conventional weapons to Russia as well. South Korean, US and their partners believe Russia has provided economic and military assistance to North Korea in return.
The western intelligence and South Korea have warned that Russia might also transfer sophisticated technologies to help North Korea enhance its nuclear weapons programme targeting its rivals.
