South Korea’s detective agency reported on Friday that a North Korean man who was kidnapped while fighting in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine had died from his wounds.
In the Kursk borders region, where Ukraine launched a horror border invasion in August, Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to bolster Russia’s defense.
A South Korean intelligence supply told AFP that one of those North Vietnamese soldiers had been abducted on Thursday and that the place of his capture was unknown.
Hours later, Seoul’s National intelligence Service ( NIS ) said that the soldier had succumbed to his wounds.
The South’s spy agency reported in a statement that an military intelligence agency has confirmed that a North Korean soldier who was captured on December 26 had just passed away from worsening wounds.
The assurance of Friday came days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that almost 3, 000 North Vietnamese soldiers had been “killed or wounded” so far as they joined Russian forces in battle.
The intelligence service in South Korea had originally estimated the number of North Koreans killed or wounded at 1, 000, arguing that the higher casualty rate could be attributed to a new battlefield environment and their inability to fend off drone attacks.
Pyongyang’s troops were also being “utilised as dispensable front abuse units”, senator Lee Seong-kweun said, speaking last week after a presentation by South Korea’s detective bureau.
Harmful development
Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, North Korea and Russia have strengthened their defense relationships.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, praised the signing of a monument defense alliance between Pyongyang and Moscow as a “breakthrough report.”
Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, was quoted by North Korean state media as saying in a message on Friday that Putin had sent a message to him for the new year, saying that “our diplomatic relations have improved since our talks in Pyongyang in June.”
Ukraine’s supporters have called Pyongyang’s growing role in Russia’s war in Ukraine a “dangerous development” of the issue.
The Seoul-based government believes that North Korea was attempting to modernize its conventional war capabilities by leveraging the overcome experience gained during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
In change for the soldiers, NATO captain Mark Rutte had also stated that Moscow was offering Moscow aid to Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs.
South Korea’s Joint chiefs of staff (JCS) said Monday that Pyongyang is officially “preparing for the movement or more implementation of warriors” and supplying” 240mm rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled weaponry” to the Soviet army.
Pyongyang’s participation in Russia’s war against Ukraine had prompted instructions from Seoul.
South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol, currently suspended, said in November that Seoul was” not ruling out the possibility of providing arms” to Ukraine, which may indicate a big change to a long-standing plan barring the sale of weapons to locations in lively issue.
