By Hyung-Jin Kim, SEOUL South
Korea
South Korea early this week demanded the immediate pullout of North Korean troops allegedly deployed in Russia as it summoned the Russian ambassador to protest deepening military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow.
South Korea’s spy agency said
Friday it had confirmed that North Korea sent 1,500
special operation forces to Russia this month to support Moscow’s war
against Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier said his
government had intelligence that 10,000
North Korea soldiers were being prepared to join invading Russian
forces.
During a meeting with Russian
Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev, Vice South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Hong Kyun
“condemned in the strongest terms” North Korea’s troop dispatch that he said
poses “a grave security threat” to South Korea and the international community,
the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Kim said that South Korea in
collaboration with the international community will mobilize all available
means to deal with an act that threatens its vital national security interests,
according to the statement. The Russian Embassy quoted Zinoviev as saying that
the Russian-North Korean cooperation is not aimed against the security
interests of South Korea.
In a telephone call with NATO
Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Monday, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol
said that Seoul won’t sit idly by “reckless” military cooperation between
Pyongyang and Moscow. Yoon said South Korea will soon send a delegation to NATO
to exchange information about Russian-North Korean cooperation, according to
Yoon’s office. Rutte wrote on X that North Korea possibly fighting alongside
Russia would “mark a significant escalation.”
The U.S. and NATO haven’t
confirmed that North Korean troops were sent to Russia. But the reports of
their presence have already stoked concerns in South Korea that Russia might
provide North Korea with sophisticated technologies that can sharply enhance
the North’s nuclear and missile programs in return for its troop dispatch.
North Korea’s advancing
nuclear arsenal is a major security threat to South Korea. North Korean leader
Kim Jong Un recently took steps to permanently terminate
all relations with South Korea and threatened
to use nuclear weapons preemptively. Some observers say South Korea
will likely consider supplying weapons to Ukraine if Russian transfers of
high-tech nuclear and missile technologies to North Korea are verified.
South Korea has joined U.S.-led
sanctions against Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine in February
2022. But South Korea hasn’t directly provided arms to Kyiv, citing its
longstanding policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in
conflicts.
Russia has earlier denied
using North Korean troops in its war with Ukraine. North Korea’s state media
hasn’t commented on the matter. Ukrainian officials released a
video allegedly showing North Korean soldiers lining up to collect
Russian military clothes and bags at an unknown location. The Associated Press
couldn’t verify the footage independently.
Asked about the North Korean
troops during a conference call with reporters Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov said that “we are seeing a lot of contradictory information.”
“South Koreans say one thing,
then the Pentagon says it has no confirmation of such statements. There is a
lot of contradictory information,” Peskov said. ”It must be treated as such.”
At a U.N. Security Council
meeting Monday on Ukraine, Western ambassadors raised the South Korean
intelligence, but none confirmed it.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert
Wood said that if true, it marks “a dangerous and highly concerning
development” and noted that the U.S. was “consulting with our allies and
partners on such a dramatic move.”
Britain’s U.N. Ambassador
Barbara Woodward said it’s “highly likely” North Korea agreed to send troops in
support of Russia’s war.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador
Vassily Nebenzia dismissed the South Korean assertion as well as Western
allegations of Iran
supplying Russia with missiles and China
providing arms components. He accused the West of “circulating
scaremongering with Iranian, Chinese and Korean bogeymen, each one of which is
more absurd than the one before.”
North Korea’s troop deployment
to Russia would be its first participation in a major war since the end of the
1950-53 Korean War. Many experts question how much North Korean troops would
help Russia on the battlefield, citing their lack of combat experience.
Cooperation between North
Korea and Russia has flourished over the past two years. The U.S., South Korea
and their partners have accused North
Korea of supplying conventional arms to Russia in return for economic
and military assistance. In June, Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin
signed a pact
stipulating mutual military assistance if either country is attacked.
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