South Korea’s intelligence agency says it has identified a North Korean missile engineer attending a Russian missile launch on the frontline in eastern Ukraine.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service made the claim on Friday. It also said the engineer is probably the same person who accompanied North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last year on a munitions factory inspection.
The agency analyzed a picture believed to have been taken near Ukraine’s Donetsk region on an undisclosed date.
The location is believed to be a launch site for North Korean-made, short-range ballistic missiles. The agency says facial recognition technology concludes it is more than 80 percent likely that one person in the picture is an engineer who accompanied Kim in August last year on a visit to a factory that manufactures mobile missile launchers.
It says North Korean engineers dispatched to Russian forces in Ukraine appear to be supporting launches of North Korean-made weapons, while also seeking out new technologies.
The agency says the North has started participating in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.