Kim Jong Un admits North Korean troops cleared mines in Russia’s Kursk region

North Korea sent troops earlier this year to carry out mine-clearing operations in Russia’s Kursk region, leader Kim Jong Un has said, a rare public acknowledgement by Pyongyang that its deployed soldiers were assigned such dangerous tasks.

AFP cited South Korean and Western intelligence agencies as saying that North Korea has dispatched thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine.

According to analysts quoted by the news agency, Moscow is providing North Korea with financial assistance, military technology, food and energy supplies in return. This support has helped the diplomatically isolated country circumvent strict international sanctions imposed over its nuclear and missile programmes.

In a speech broadcast by state media on Saturday, Kim praised the return of an engineering regiment and said the soldiers had written “letters to their hometowns and villages at breaks of the mine-clearing hours”.