A government delegation from South Korea will attend a meeting of NATO’s North Atlantic Council to discuss data on the dispatch of troops from the DPRK to the war in Ukraine, the bloc said.
NATO notes that representatives of other North Atlantic alliance partner countries in the Indo-Pacific region, including Japan, Australia and New Zealand, have also been invited to the meeting.
According to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, a delegation from South Korea will visit Brussels on Monday.
The Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate said this week that some 12,000 troops from North Korea have already arrived on the frontline of the Russian-Ukrainian war. According to Kiev, some of these military personnel may have been sent to the Kursk region, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces are conducting their operation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin did not deny the information about the dispatch of the North Korean military to the combat area. In response to a question from journalists during the BRICS summit in Kazan, Putin said that Moscow and Pyongyang had signed a strategic cooperation agreement and it was up to them to decide how to implement it.
According to Yonhap, the South Korean delegation may also discuss with NATO representatives further ways to support Ukraine in its opposition to Russian aggression.
In particular, according to the agency, they may discuss sending ‘a group of South Korean officials to monitor troops from the DPRK’.
In case such a group is sent, it could be engaged in studying the tactics and military doctrine of the North Korean military, it could also include experts in psychological warfare who could urge soldiers from the DPRK to surrender. These people could also potentially take part in the interrogation of North Korean prisoners, Yonhap reported.
Seoul is also discussing the possibility of supplying Ukraine with arms. So far, South Korea has so far limited itself to humanitarian support for Kiev.