Russia has sent air-defence missiles and other military technology to North Korea in return for the deployment of its troops to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, intelligence officials in South Korea have said.
In a TV interview on Friday, South Korea’s top security adviser, Shin Won-sik, suggested the Kremlin had started to fulfil its side of a deal to provide the regime in Pyongyang with technology and aid as “payment” for the deployment of more than 10,000 North Korean troops to Ukraine.
“It has been identified that equipment and anti-aircraft missiles aimed at reinforcing Pyongyang’s vulnerable air-defence system have been delivered to North Korea,” Shin, the national security adviser to the South’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, told the broadcaster SBS.
Shin did not offer details of how intelligence officials had confirmed the arrival in North Korea of Russian military support, and North Korea and the Kremlin have not commented on his claims.
North Korea had also received “various forms of economic support” and may have acquired Russian technology for its troubled spy satellite programme, Shin said.
North Korea claimed it had put its first spy satellite into orbit in November last year after two failed attempts, but experts have questioned whether it is able to produce imagery that could be useful to the country’s military. Another satellite launch in May also ended in failure.
Experts believe North Korea agreed to send troops to the western Kursk border region in return for military technology, ranging from surveillance satellites to submarines, as well as possible security guarantees from Moscow.
When they met in Pyongyang in June, the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, signed a mutual aid agreement that obliged both countries to provide military assistance “without delay” in the case of an attack on the other.
The leaders are also thought to have agreed to cooperate to oppose western sanctions targeting Russia and the North’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes.
South Korean intelligence officials told lawmakers this week they believed North Korean troops had been assigned to Russia’s airborne brigade and marine units, adding that some had already seen combat.
North Korea is thought to be eager to bolster its air defences in Pyongyang after it accused South Korea of using drones to drop propaganda leaflets over the capital in October.
The US and South Korea are most concerned about possible transfers of Russian nuclear and missile technology to the North, which has continued to develop a nuclear arsenal in defiance of decades of UN-led sanctions.
Shin did not say whether Russia had made the transfers, and experts believe the Kremlin is unlikely to agree to provide such sensitive technology while the North’s troop deployment in Ukraine is still in its early stages.
Much of the military aid appears to be moving in one direction. Last month, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said the North had sent more than 13,000 containers of artillery, missiles and other conventional arms to Russia since August 2023.
