Any decision to send North Korean troops to Russia would be in line with international law, Pyongyang said, amid reports that its soldiers could reach the front lines of the war in Ukraine as early as this weekend.
Kim Jong Gyu, North Korea’s vice foreign minister, described the dispatch of Korean People’s Army forces to Russia as a “rumor,” but went on to say his ministry “does not directly engage in” the defense establishment’s matters.
“If there is such a thing that the world media is talking about, I think it will be an act conforming with the regulations of international law,” he said in the response carried by North Korea‘s official Korean Central News Agency. “There will evidently exist forces which want to describe it as illegal one, I think.”
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un during their meeting in Vladivostok on April 25, 2019. North Korea’s foreign ministry said on October 25 that any decision to dispatch troops to Russia would be consistent with…
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un during their meeting in Vladivostok on April 25, 2019. North Korea’s foreign ministry said on October 25 that any decision to dispatch troops to Russia would be consistent with international law.
More
Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool/AP
It was the North Korean government’s first attempt to directly address rapidly evolving intelligence—first from Seoul, then from Kyiv and Washington—that thousands of North Korean soldiers have been transported to the Russian Far East for military training.
Earlier this week, a North Korean diplomat told a United Nations committee that the allegations were rumors meant to smear Pyongyang and its deepening relationship with Moscow.
The Russian parliament ratified on Thursday a mutual defense pact signed in June by President Vladimir Putin and North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un. In cryptic comments the same day, Putin said he “never doubted” Kim Jong Un’s pledge of mutual aid when they signed their accord in Pyongyang.
South Korea‘s spy agency believes the North has committed at least 12,000 troops, including special operations forces, to the war. On Friday, the National Intelligence Service in Seoul said it would dispatch a senior delegation to Brussels next week to brief NATO and EU leaders on the matter.
Earlier on Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said a first group of North Korean fighters could reach “combat zones” as early as Sunday, without elaborating.
Ukraine‘s Main Intelligence Directorate, better known as the GUR, said this week that North Korean ground forces had already been detected in Kursk, where the Russian army has been fighting off a surprise raid by the Ukrainian armed forces since August. Reports out of Tokyo, citing Ukrainian military intelligence, said 2,000 North Korean troops could be sent to the western Russian region, where an advance team was already prepared for their arrival.
Additionally, the GUR estimated there were 500 North Korean officers as well as three army generals among the forces dispatched by Kim Jong Un. However, it remained unclear whether the North Korean leader was ready to order his troops across the border into Ukraine for what would be the first major foreign war in his nation’s history.
The Russia-Ukraine war is already Europe’s largest conflict since World War II, and Zelensky has warned that North Korea’s entry could see the fighting spread across the globe. Experts who spoke to Newsweek this week said the move would escalate the conflict, but not yet to the scale of another world war.
North Korea’s embassy in Beijing didn’t respond to multiple written requests for comment.
Update 10/25/24, 10:30 a.m. ET: This breaking news story was updated with additional information.