SEOUL: Around 600 North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia against Ukraine have been killed and thousands more wounded, a Seoul lawmaker said on Wednesday (Apr 30), after Pyongyang officially confirmed deploying troops to aid Moscow.
“So far, North Korean troop casualties are estimated at around 4,700, including approximately 600 deaths,” MP Lee Seong-kweun, a member of parliament’s intelligence committee, told reporters after a briefing by the country’s spy agency.
North Korea confirmed for the first time Monday that it had deployed troops to Russia, with state news agency KCNA reporting Pyongyang’s soldiers helped Moscow reclaim territory under Ukrainian control in the Russian border region of Kursk.
Moscow had separately confirmed the North’s participation, after months of official silence from both countries, even as Seoul and Washington accused Pyongyang of sending ever more troops and weapons to help.
Some 2,000 soldiers have been taken back to nuclear-armed North Korea this year, Lee said, and were now reportedly being held in isolation in Pyongyang and at other locations across the country.
“It is understood that the bodies of fallen soldiers were cremated locally in Kursk before being transported,” back to the North, he added.
North Korea “supported Russia’s recapture of Kursk by deploying 18,000 troops in two phases“, Lee said, adding that the number of clashes in the area had decreased since around March.
Since then, “there have been reports of misconduct within North Korean forces, including excessive drinking and theft”, he said.
