A senior North Korean general fighting with Russian forces in the Kursk region was wounded in a recent Ukrainian air strike, Western officials said on Thursday.
The verified casualty is the first time Western officials have confirmed that a high-ranking North Korean military officer has been injured in the full-scale invasion since they arrived weeks ago, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Several sources have confirmed that at least 10,000 North Korean troops are currently deployed in the Kursk region and that Russian forces are being heavily supplied from Pyongyang’s defense coffers.
International allies including the US have condemned Moscow’s use of North Korean soldiers and have warned that the move will be seen as an escalation by Kyiv’s partners. Experts have suggested that the NK soldiers were the impetus for US President Joe Biden's surprise announcement last week relenting on the ban preventing Ukraine from using American-made long-range weapons to strike inside Russia.
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Other allies quickly followed suit, and Ukrainian officials announced that they had launched at least 10 British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles into Kursk on Wednesday.
No further details are available about the identity or ranking of the wounded North Korean soldier.
North Korean troops who fight in Ukraine will become “fair game and fair targets” for the UAF, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last month.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the United States and the West are using the Ukrainian military as "shock troops" to fight Russia and risk triggering a global conflict, state media reported last week.
Seoul and Washington have accused the nuclear-armed North of sending more than 10,000 soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine, with experts saying Kim was eager for Moscow's advanced technology, plus battle experience for his troops, in return.
Pyongyang has denied the deployment, and Kim did not mention it in a speech to battalion commanders carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The US and the West are using the conflict in Ukraine to “expand the scope of their military interventions globally,”, Kim said.
They are also trying to “enhance their combat experience, with Ukraine being used as shock troops” against Russia, he said.
Washington's “continuing military assistance to Ukraine... raises the concern of World War III,” he said.
Kim vowed his country would bolster its nuclear weapons defense “without limit.”
His warning comes after Seoul said last week that North Korean troops had already begun “engaging in combat operations” alongside Russian forces near the border with Ukraine.
Kim “is likely keeping in mind the possibility of additional deployments to support Russia's war in Ukraine,” said Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
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