North Korea sends troops to Russia to rebuild Kursk region

Thousands of soldiers and construction workers will move in defiance of UN sanctions as the Kremlin cosies up to the Kim Jong-un regime.

Sergei Shoigu met Kim Jong-un at the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang on Tuesday. Picture: Korean Central News Agency via AP

North Korea is to send 6000 construction workers and soldiers to help rebuild Russia’s Kursk region as Kim Jong-un and President Putin plan memorials for those whose died driving out Ukrainian troops from the territory.

The deployment was announced by Sergei Shoigu, the head of Russia’s security council, as he visited North Korea for the third time in three months. His latest meeting with Kim comes exactly a year after Putin and Kim met in Pyongyang to agree a “comprehensive strategic partnership” that has transformed them into close military allies and trading partners.

“Chairman Kim Jong-un has decided to send 1000 sappers [combat engineers] … to de-mine Russian territory, as well as 5000 military construction workers to rebuild infrastructure facilities destroyed by the occupiers,” Shoigu said, according to the state news agency Tass. “I think this work will begin in the near future.”

A North Korean soldier whom President Zelensky of Ukraine said had been captured.

The South Korean intelligence agency says the North has sent 3000 soldiers to Kursk this year, on top of 11,000 in 2024. Britain’s Ministry of Defence has estimated half of them have been wounded or killed by Ukrainian armed forces, which occupied parts of Kursk last summer before being largely driven out earlier this year.

Accounts of Ukrainian soldiers, and two surviving North Korean captives, suggest they took heavy losses at first, especially from drones, and sometimes killed themselves with grenades rather than submit to capture.

“The heads of our states have decided to immortalise the feat of the soldiers of the Korean People’s Army who took part in the fighting,” said Shoigu, whose delegation in Pyongyang included sculptors and architects.

He added: “Specifically, we are talking about the unveiling of memorials in Russia and the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] in memory of the Korean soldiers who fell in the battles for the liberation of the Russian territory. In this regard, during the visit, the construction of a memorial complex with a museum in Pyongyang with the participation of the Russian side was discussed.”

United Nations member states are banned from hosting North Korean workers as part of a sanctions regime aimed at cutting off sources of foreign currency. But South Korea says that there are 15,000 such labourers in Russia, which originally supported the sanctions. Their wages are paid to state organisations, which are assumed to take a large chunk for themselves.

North Korean official media reported the meeting between Kim and Shoigu, and showed video of the two men embracing warmly, but did not go into detail about the new deployment of personnel.

“Kim Jong-un confirmed the contents of the DPRK’s co-operation within the range of the treaty between the two countries, accepted the relevant plans and discussed in detail the necessary co-operation plans,” the Korean Central News Agency said.

The Times