According to South Korean lawmakers, about 600 North Korean soldiers have died fighting in Ukraine, according to intelligence officials.
Lee Seong-kweun and Kim Byung-kee told reporters that an estimated 4,700 North Koreans have been killed or injured so far in the war after a closed-door briefing by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) on Wednesday.
Two days after Pyongyang revealed for the first time that it had sent troops to Russia in support of Moscow’s war, Lee and Kim, who co-chair the legislature’s intelligence committee, made their remarks.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was quoted as saying in a report from the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday that he had ordered the deployment of troops to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces.”
The spy agency’s alleged claim that about 300 North Korean soldiers were killed in the conflict increased significantly from the NIS’s briefing to lawmakers in January.
According to the NIS, Lee and Kim, who represent the conservative People Power Party and the liberal Democratic Party, have deployed about 15, 000 soldiers overall.
Additionally, the lawmakers noted that Pyongyang may have received assistance from other countries in the form of drones, electronic warfare equipment, and SA-22 surface-to-air missiles.
Source: Aljazeera
Leave a Reply