Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on June 17, 2025
By Hyunsu Yim and Joyce Lee
SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Russia's top presidential security adviser Sergei Shoigu in Pyongyang on Tuesday and discussed a "special military operation" in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine, state media KCNA reported on Wednesday.
Kim and Shoigu, secretary of Russia's Security Council, discussed cooperation plans for Moscow's rebuilding of the Kursk region, the report said, confirming earlier reports of the meeting by Russian media.
Plans to commemorate the "heroic feats" of North Korean soldiers in the operations in the Kursk region, a part of Russia which Ukrainian forces infiltrated last year, were also discussed during the meeting, KCNA said.
North Korea will send 5,000 military construction workers and 1,000 sappers to the region to help rebuild it after the Ukrainian incursion that North Korean troops helped Moscow repel this year, Shoigu was cited as saying by the Russian state news agency TASS on Tuesday.
His visit to Pyongyang and meeting with Kim came nearly two weeks after his last meeting with the leader of the reclusive state on June 4.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that North Korea's dispatch of troops to Russia is a clear violation of U.N. sanctions, and called for the immediate halt of such cooperations between the two nations.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba agreed to cooperate further on North Korea in a summit at G7 in Canada, Ishiba and the South Korean presidential office said.
A Reuters investigation has found that North Korea has supplied millions of artillery rounds and thousands of troops to Russia for fighting in Ukraine.
Kim has expressed "unconditional support" for Russia's policies amid concerns by South Korean and Western officials that North Korea may be receiving Moscow's help with advanced military technology as well as economic assistance.
(Reporting by Hyunsu Yim and Joyce Lee; Editing by Leslie Adler, Stephen Coates and Michael Perry)
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