Written by Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States warned on Wednesday that North Korea is benefiting from its troops fighting Russia and Ukraine, and gaining information that enables Pyongyang “to fight its neighbors.”
Russia has developed close diplomatic and military ties with North Korea since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
More than 12,000 North Korean troops are in Russia and last month began fighting with Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region, US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Camille Shea told the United Nations Security Council.
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“The DPRK benefits greatly from receiving Russian military equipment, technology and experience, which enables it to fight its neighbors,” Shea told the 15-member council, which was meeting for what Pyongyang said was a test of a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile on Monday.
“In turn, the DPRK will be willing to use these developments to promote arms sales and military training contracts around the world,” he said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The UN ambassador to North Korea, Kim Song, justified Monday’s missile test as part of a plan to improve the country’s defense capabilities. He accused the United States of double standards.
“When the number of dead people exceeded 45,000 in Gaza, the United States decorated the terrible brutality of mass killings in Israel as a right of self-defense … the Security Council.
Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia reiterated Moscow’s long-standing accusation that the US, South Korea and Japan are provoking North Korea with military exercises. He also dismissed as “absolutely unsubstantiated” US allegations that Russia intends to share satellite and space technology with Pyongyang.
“Such statements are the latest example of baseless ideas aimed at slandering cooperation between the Russian Federation and the friendly country of the DPRK,” said Nebenzia, who also congratulated North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on his birthday on Wednesday.
South Korea’s UN ambassador Joonkook Hwang told the council that North Korean soldiers were “Kim Jong Un’s slaves, disbanded to sacrifice their lives on distant battlefields to raise money for his regime and secure advanced military technology from Russia.”
North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006, and measures have been gradually tightened over the years with the aim of halting Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Russia has veto power in the 15-member body, so any further action by the council is unlikely.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Rod Nickel)
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