The military intelligence of Ukraine estimates that North Korean soldiers are still participating in fighting against Ukrainian troops, even after several thousand soldiers of DPRK were back in North Korea. Kyiv reports that the rest of the North Koreans who remain are carrying out artillery attacks in Russia Kursk area highlighting what Ukrainian authorities report as continued foreign intervention in the conflict.
On Wednesday the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) released a statement that there were still groups of North Korean soldiers stationed in the Kursk region of Russia as of last month. These forces were reported by the agency to have been shelling Ukrainian community on the Russian side of the border. The DIU did not reveal the exact number of the North Korean troops that are in the region at the moment, but it has noticed that the troops that are present in Kursk do their rotational one after another.
According to the intelligence of Ukraine, the soldiers of North Korea are under the Russian military command. The DIU says that they are employing traditional tube artillery and multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) to produce attacks. Aerial and artillery reconnaissance is supported to carry out these attacks and to change the fire of MLRS. The agency also indicated that the units have also participated in renaissance and targeting operations with the Russian forces.
According to the DIU, one of the main goals of North Korea to engage in the war is to acquire experience in the modern warfare, especially the use of unmanned devices and modern technologies of the battlefield. It referred to this as an attempt by Pyongyang to introduce its forces to the 21 st century warfare by engaging in the conflict directly.
With the reported involvement of North Korea in the war since its start, Ukraine intelligence agency estimates that an estimated 3,000 North Korean soldiers who were trained and received experience in fighting in Russia have already returned to DPRK. The DIU confirms that most of those soldiers went to become military instructors where they are suspected to transfer their experience to other units in the armed forces of North Korea.
According to Ukrainian officials, over 14,000 total troops of North Korea are deployed since October 2024 to assist the Russians in repelling the Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region. The DIU said that DPRK leader Kim Jong Un had personally received back home some of the returning soldiers in Pyongyang, including some special operations troops and demining experts.
State media reports by North Korean have indicated that the fatalities that have been experienced by its troops could be in the hundreds. The Western intelligence estimates quoted by Ukraine place the number of North Koreans killed in action at some 1,500, with a total of between 4,000 and 5,000 wounded and dead in total.
Besides the human resource, according to the intelligence services of Ukraine, North Korea has provided Russia with artillery, ammunition, and other war materials to assist Russia in its fight against Ukraine. These provisions are characterized as a military collaboration between Moscow and Pyongyang on a larger scale.
In January, an inquiry by NK Pro revealed that the shipments of arms at the North Korean border city of Rason seemed to decelerate potentially because of frozen Russian ports. But, satellite images such as those released recently of new containers at the port of Rason, indicate that the process of transplanting military equipment may resume or even increase in the coming years.
Ukraine has appealed on multiple occasions to the case of North Korea to demonstrate the growing global aspects of the war, as it remains vigilant in describing the growing presence of the DPRK forces and equipment to assist the Russian military campaigns.