SEOUL: South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador on Monday to criticise Pyongyang’s decision to send thousands of soldiers to support Moscow’s war in Ukraine, the foreign ministry said, calling for their immediate withdrawal.

In Pyongyang’s first such deployment overseas, about 1,500 North Korean special forces soldiers are already in Russia acclimatising and likely to head to the front lines after, Seoul’s spy agency said, with additional troops set to depart soon.

South Korea has long claimed the nuclear-armed North is supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine, while leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a military deal in June.

Seoul expressed its “grave concerns regarding North Korea’s recent dispatch of troops to Russia and strongly urged the immediate withdrawal of North Korean forces”, vice foreign minister Kim Hong-kyun told Russian Ambassador Georgiy Zinoviev.

Seoul’s spy agency released detailed satellite images showing the first batch of 1,500 North Korean special forces from the elite “Storm Corps” had arrived in Vladivostok on Russian military vessels. Any military cooperation between the two countries violates multiple Security Council resolutions, Kim said.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2024