South Korea said on Friday that it believes North Korea has sent troops to Russia, marking a grave security threat to the international community that Seoul will respond to with all available means, the presidential office said in a statement.
Advertisement
Separately, the country’s spy agency said North Korea was participating in the war in Ukraine and had decided to send 12,000 troops, including a special forces unit, Yonhap news agency reported.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol held an unscheduled security meeting with key intelligence, military and national security officials to discuss North Korean troops’ involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine, it said.
“The participants … shared the view that the current situation where Russia and North Korea’s closer ties have gone beyond the movement of military supplies to actual dispatch of troops is a grave security threat not only to our country but to the international community,” it said.
South Korean officials have previously said it was likely true that some North Korean personnel were in Russia and involved in its war with Ukraine, but have not given a clear answer on the nature or the scale of any such deployment.
Yoon’s office said South Korea together with its allies have been closely tracking North Korea’s troop dispatch to Russia from the initial stages. It did not, however, provide any intelligence to backup the assertion of troop deployment.
Advertisement