Pyongyang confirms North Korean troops fighting in Russia’s Kursk

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea finally confirmed Monday that it had sent troops to fight in Russia’s Kursk area, after the Kremlin broke its silence on the issue on Saturday.

The belated confirmation of a mission that has been tracked by Kyiv, Seoul and Washington since October 2023 comes as combat operations in Russia’s Kursk Oblast appear to have almost wrapped up.

It also comes before one of the biggest dates on Russia’s annual calendar: the May 9 “Victory Day” celebrations, which this year mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk last August “decided our armed forces’ participation in the war,” the Korean Central News Agency stated in a report early Monday, which was monitored in Seoul.

The North’s state agency explicitly stated that the deployment had been cleared by head of state Kim Jong Un, calling it “a sacred mission” consolidating Pyongyang’s friendship with Moscow.

KCNA quoted Mr. Kim’s use of Moscow’s description of the conflict, saying the deployment was meant to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area.”

A monument to the fallen will be raised, the report added.

Pyongyang’s Monday reveal followed a similar Saturday announcement in Moscow.

Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, publicly confirmed North Korean participation in the war for the first time in a briefing to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“I want specially to note the participation of servicemen of [North Korea] in liberating border areas of the Kursk Region … in accordance with the Treaty on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between our countries,” Gen. Gerasimov said, according to Moscow’s Tass news agency.

Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin signed their “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” in Pyongyang in June 2023. In August, Ukraine launched its surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

The opening on a new front on Russian soil, in a war launched by Mr. Putin against Ukraine in February 2022, apparently triggered the conditions of the mutual defense clause of the partnership.

Prior to the troop deployment, North Korea had been supplying Russia with missiles and shells, in numbers that now have reached the millions.

Though exact dates remain unclear, an estimated three brigades of North Korean troops, totaling around 12,000 men from elite units, were deployed to Russia last October, and were in action in November.

In early operations, due to language and communications barriers with Russian support units, the North Koreans were unable to use combined arms tactics, using armor, artillery, drones and tactical air power.

As a result, they operated as shock infantry, the riskiest role in war.

On the highly kinetic battlefield of Europe’s bloodiest war since 1945, and in North Korea’s only significant conflict since 1953, casualties soared.

However, North Korea’s tolerance for casualties is high.

Not only is it a totalitarian state, it fields 1.1 million troops, of whom around 200,000 are believed to be Tier 1 and Tier 2 special forces units – commandos, paratroops, marines, shock infantry.

An estimated 3,000 reinforcements have been sent to boost the battered brigades in Kursk.

As North Koreans adapted to modern battlefield conditions, they upgraded their competencies.

Gen. Gerasimov praised the effectiveness of Russia’s only allies in the Ukraine War.

“Soldiers and officers of the Korean People’s Army were accomplishing combat objectives shoulder to shoulder with Russian servicemen and in the process of repelling the Ukrainian incursion showed high professionalism and displayed endurance, courage and heroism in combat,” he said.

Those comments reflect what Ukrainian troops fighting in Kursk have been saying for months. They have grudgingly praised the North Koreans for their determination, physical fitness and marksmanship, which exceed those of Russian troops.

North Koreans have also proven difficult to capture, often fighting to the death or committing suicide with hand grenades to evade capture.

Two questions now rise. With Kursk having been cleared, will the North Koreans fight in Ukraine proper? And will Mr. Kim join other Russia-friendly leaders in Red Square on May 9?

Robert Collins, a former interrogator of North Korean troops and author of an upcoming book on Pyongyang’s sabotage and espionage assets, expects them to continue fighting.

“They will probably do whatever Putin wants them to do,” he said. “I’d guess he told Kim, ‘If you give me troops, I’ll do with them as I might.’”

With the two countries having only just revealed their battleship partnership, equal opacity covers what Mr. Putin is offering Mr. Kim besides 21st century combat experience that the South Korean military does not have.

Mr. Collins suggested technological assistance for arms programs, grain, oil, and money.

Gen. Gerasimov’s statements may clear the way for North Korean troops to goose step alongside their Russian comrades across Red Square during the Victory Day parade. Whether Mr. Kim will appear on the saluting podium is unknown.

“Kim Jong Un has not attended any multilateral summits,” Doo Jin-ho, head of the global strategy division of the South’s state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analysis, told foreign reporters in Seoul last month. “He is not well prepared.”

Mr. Kim has undertaken bilateral meetings with leaders including Mr. Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, President Trump and South Korea’s then-President Moon Jae-in. But he has never gone to multilateral meetings, which usually feature off-cuff, unscripted moments.

According to Russian media, the guests invited to Moscow on May 9 include Mr. Xi, Indian Prime Minister Nahedra Modi and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as well as various leaders from the Balkans and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

With 2025 marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II – a conflict in which 27 million Soviets died – and with Russian troops currently engaged in a bloody, three-year conflict, this year’s celebrations have weighty significance for Mr. Putin.