North Korea sent thousands of workers to Russia in 2024, despite the prohibition of the UN Security Council, according to the Yonhap agency, citing the National Intelligence Service of South Korea.
The reports of South Korean intelligence indicate that North Korean workers have been sent to support the construction sector throughout Russia due to the shortage of labor caused by the war in Ukraine, as the medium has spread .
A UN Resolution of the UN Security Council, approved in response to the Balistic Missile Missile Tests of North Korea, prohibits Pyongyang to send its citizens abroad to work. North Korean workers were supposed to return to their country in December 2019.
Seoul, however, suggests that North Korea and Russia could be avoiding this prohibition using student visas to send workers. According to Radio Liberty, citing data from the Federal Statistics Service of Russia, in 2024 they entered Russia 13,221 North Koreans, approximately 12 times more than the previous year.
South Korean intelligence claimed last week that North Korea troops deployed in Kursk’s Russian region to cope with the incursion launched by Ukraine in August 2024 have taken away from the fighting fronts since mid -January.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS, according to English) indicated that North Korean troops have been removed from the front lines due to the high casualties suffered, thus confirming information recently published by the US newspaper The New York Times.
For their part, the United Kingdom’s intelligence services encrypted on January 24 in “around 4,000” the casualties suffered by the North Korean army in the fighting in Kursk, where it would have deployed about 11,000 military. “Of the total, approximately a quarter have died in combat,” they said.
