On Monday, North Korea’s senior military officer criticised the escalating US military aid to Ukraine, in further affirmation of North Korea’s backing for Moscow in the Ukrainian conflict, reported state-run KCNA. A deepening military alliance between Russia and North Korea has been causing rising concern in Washington and Seoul, who allege that the two nations are breaking international laws through arms trades that aid Russia’s fight against Ukraine. Both Moscow and Pyongyang, however, deny any such arms deals.
Last week, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed an agreement offering immediate military support to each other in case of armed attacks, during Putin’s visit to Pyongyang. According to experts, this agreement provides a grounds for possible arms deals and enabling their coalition against the US and the West.
Pak Jong Chon, a high-ranking North Korean military official, stated through KCNA on Monday, that Russia is entitled to “any form of retaliatory strike”. He added that the US’s support of Ukraine in a “proxy war” against Russia could instigate a more severe reaction from Moscow, or even a “new world conflict”. His statement was in response to remarks made by the Pentagon last week suggesting that Ukrainian forces can use US-supplied weapons to strike Russian forces across the Russian border.
High-level representatives of South Korea, the US and Japan issued a combined statement through Seoul’s foreign ministry on Monday, criticising “in the most severe terms” the developing military partnership between North Korea and Russia.
The Washington Post shared an analysis of data from US security non-profit C4ADS on Saturday, suggesting that Russia might have taken receipt of around 1.6 million artillery shells from North Korea between August and January. The data revealed that 74,000 metric tons of explosives had been shipped from Russia’s easternmost ports to sites primarily along the Ukrainian borders.
On Sunday, the top US military official suggested that Putin’s reciprocal defence pact with North Korea could potentially cause tensions with China, long-standing ally of the isolated North Korean state.
North Korea has plans to deploy construction and engineering teams to Russian-occupied Ukraine regions as early as the following month to carry out reconstruction, as per a report by a South Korean cable TV network TV Chosun, which cited a South Korean government official.
According to the information from the network, the workers, performing their roles covertly as manual labourers overseas to generate income for the regime, are to be redeployed from China to areas under Russian control. The Foreign Ministry of South Korea was not instantly reachable for a response regarding TV Chosun’s stories, as reported by Reuters. Furthermore, in light of the agreement between Putin and Kim, South Korea could look into providing military equipment to Ukraine. It’s worth noting that this information is protected by the copyright laws of Thomson Reuters 2024.