Kim Jong Un ‘personally overseeing’ North Korean training for Ukraine amid reports of heavy losses

Pyongyang claimed on Thursday that its alliance with Russia was ‘normal’ and ‘very effective’, despite international alarm about the deployment of North Korean troops to the war in Ukraine

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is personally overseeing training of soldiers to be sent to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to South Korean intelligence reports, after Pyongyang’s inexperienced forces were said to have suffered a high number of casualties.

South Korean MP Lee Seong-kweun claimed at least 100 North Korean soldiers had been killed in the war, citing a briefing to parliament by the National Intelligence Service.

“There was a report that there have been at least 100 deaths and the injured are approaching 1,000,” he said.

MPs were told that the North may be preparing for more deployments to Russia, Lee said, as well as about intelligence that the country’s leader Kim Jong Un is overseeing training.

Ukraine and its allies estimate that North Korea has deployed between 10,000 and 12,000 troops so far to aid Russia’s war effort. The Pentagon said the soldiers were largely deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where Moscow’s forces were battling a Ukrainian ground incursion since August.

They also accused North Korea of shipping artillery systems, ballistic missiles and other weapons to replenish Russia’s armouries. Russia and North Korea neither confirmed nor denied the accusations.

The US and nine other countries condemned Pyongyang’s alleged export of ballistic missiles and other military equipment to Russia for use in the Ukraine war in a joint statement on Monday. The North’s direct support for the Russian war effort, they said, marked a “dangerous expansion of the conflict”.

On Thursday North Korea’s foreign ministry said its relationship with Russia was being “distorted” by the West, calling its alliance with Moscow “normal” and “very effective”.

The statement made no mention of Pyongyang’s involvement in the Ukraine war or the casualties its troops allegedly suffered in Kursk.

The North blamed Washington and its allies for prolonging the Ukraine war and destabilising the security situation in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

The “madness” on display in response to the North’s relationship with Russia “goes to prove that the strengthened cooperative relations between independent sovereign states are very effective in deterring the US and the West’s ill-intended extension of influence”, it added.

Washington and Kyiv recently claimed that North Korean soldiers took heavy casualties while fighting Ukrainian forces in the Russian border region. The Ukrainian military intelligence agency said at least 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded, while a US official suggested the figure for North Korean casualties was in the “several hundreds”.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky posted drone footage on Telegram claiming that it showed North Korean soldiers fighting in the war.

"Ukraine’s defence forces and intelligence are working to determine the full extent of the actual losses suffered by Russian units that include North Koreans," he said.

The Russian military was taking drastic measures to conceal the identity of North Koreans by burning the faces of those killed in battle, Mr Zelensky claimed.