North Korea will send more military aid to Russia to help Moscow in its war efforts in Ukraine, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, known as JCS, said Monday.
The reinforcements are estimated to include additional troops and weapons, including kamikaze drones. "A comprehensive assessment of multiple intelligence shows that North Korea is preparing to rotate or increase the deployment of troops in Russia while currently supplying 240mm rocket launchers and 170mm self-propelled artillery," the JCS said.
The JCS said the additional weapons include suicide drones as these drones are one of the goals that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has focused on.
"There are also some signs of [the North] moving to manufacture and supply suicide drones, first unveiled during Kim Jong-un's on-site inspection in November," the JCS said, stressing that Pyongyang has sought to gain practical warfare experience and modernize its conventional weapons system. Drones have been widely used in the war that enters third year. Ukraine’s military said Monday it shot down 47 aerial drones that Russia launched across Ukraine overnight. The Ukrainian air force said Russia used a total of 72 drones in its latest round of daily aerial assaults.
It should be noted that Russia and North Korea have strengthened military cooperation since Moscow’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. According to Kyiv, Washington and Seoul intelligence reports, at least 12,000 North Korean troops have been deployed in Russia since August this year. Over 100 of these troops have already been killed during battles in Russia’s border Kursk region, according to Ukrainian reports published last week.
