North Korean troops helping Putin is a ‘grave’ threat to the world, Seoul says

South Korea’s president warned Friday that North Korea’s involvement in the war in Ukraine poses a “grave security threat” to the world. 

President Yoon Suk Yeol held a security meeting Friday with key intelligence, military and national security officials to discuss Pyongyang’s participation in Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s offensive against Ukraine. 

According to the presidential office, the participants “shared the view that the current situation, in which the close military ties between Russia and North Korea have expanded beyond the movement of military supplies to the actual deployment of troops, poses a grave security threat” to South Korea and the international community.

South Korea’s spy agency said Friday it believes North Korea has already begun deploying four brigades totaling 12,000 troops, including special forces, to the war in Ukraine.

Separately, the head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate also shared the agency’s assessment that there are now nearly 11,000 North Korean infantry troops training in Russia to fight in Ukraine. “They will be ready on Nov. 1,” Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov told The War Zone. 

The North Korean troops will use Russian equipment and ammunition, Budanov said. The first cadre of 2,600 troops will go to Kursk inside Russia where Ukraine began a surprise incursion in the late summer, but it is unclear where the remaining North Korean troops will be posted, he added.

In June, Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty that commits both countries to provide military assistance to each other if either is attacked.