North Korea Confirms Its Troops Fought Against Ukraine
North Korea confirmed on Monday that its soldiers have been involved in Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine, with the first ever acknowledgement coming shortly after Russia’s own admission that North Korean soldiers had fought alongside Russian soldiers.
A front page article in the party-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper quoted North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un as saying “The fighting spirit and heroism of the soldiers, who exalted the great name of the strong and the glory of the victors, will shine forever from the high podiums of respect and honor for generations to come”.
The article described the deployment of North Korean soldiers as a “liberation operation” ordered by Kim Jong Un in response to the Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, with Kim further quoted as saying that a monument to the soldiers would be built in Pyongyang, and that more military cooperation with Russia is to come.
On April 26, the Kremlin published a readout of a report by the chief of the Russian general staff, Army General Valery Gerasimov to Russian President Vladimir Putin, where he praised the “fortitude and heroism” of North Korean soldiers in his claim that all Ukrainian forces had been forced out of Kursk Oblast. Subsequently the Russian government released footsge of North Korean troops training in Russia, with Russian arms and equipment.
The next day, another readout of a report from the acting commander of Russia’s 810th Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet to Putin claimed that Ukrainian “scattered groups and individual soldiers” remained in Kursk, and would soon be destroyed.
Ukraine has denied that its forces have been completely forced out of Kursk, after having to pull back from most of the territory captured in its August 2024 incursion into Russia as a result of a Russian offensive over the winter that was aided by the use of North Korean soldiers.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service first reported in October 2024 that North Korea was preparing to deploy some of its best soldiers to aid Russia’s war efforts, with the Ukrainian military announcing in January that it had captured North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces in Kursk.
The deployment of North Korean soldiers to Kursk followed the signing of a “comprehensive strategic partnership” between North Korea and Russia in June 2024, with Russia increasingly relying on deliveries of artillery shells and ballistic missiles from North Korea by then.
The partnership is believed to have formalized exchanges of Russian consumer goods, resources, and military technologies for North Korean munitions. At the time, Overt Defense spoke with Dr. Victoria Clement, then the Russia subject matter expert at the United States Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare, on the implications of the pact.