North Korea likely used student visas to send a large number of workers as well as troops to Russia in 2024, South Korea’s intelligence agency has said.
The sanctioned east Asian country sent at least “thousands of workers to construction sites in various parts of Russia” over the past year, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) said on Sunday, confirming a major influx of North Korean nationals being sent to Russia.
In a briefing, the NIS official said around 4,000 North Korean workers – each being paid a monthly stipend of approximately $800 (£645) – were already believed to be in Russia, The Korean Herald reported.
Both Moscow and Pyongyang have been accused of violating a UN Security Council Resolution, by using student visas and other gaps, which bans employment to North Korean labourers.
Under the UN Security Council Resolution 2375, the UN member nations are banned from issuing work permits to the labour force of North Korea. The resolution mandated all existing North Korean workers to return home by the end of December 2019.
South Korean lawmaker and former Seoul’s ambassador to Russia, Wi Sung Lac, said Russia may be recruiting North Korean workers to fill gaps in the construction industry created by its prolonged aggression against Ukraine.
“I think North Korean workers may have been recruited to make up for the labour shortages after many were drafted for the war,” the Democratic Party of Korea representative said.
The latest round of North Korean workers dispatched to Russia was lesser than what was the scenario before the UN slapped sanctions on the hermit kingdom, he said. “But now that there are sanctions, they are not supposed to be sending workers at all,” Mr Wi said.
Pyongyang sent roughly 11,000 soldiers to help with Vladimir Putin’s war effort in November last year, four months after Kyiv’s troops seized Russian territory in Kursk.
Last week, Ukrainian and Western officials said North Korean troops have been pulled back from the frontline amid devastating losses but Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday said they were back again on the frontline.
Kim Jong Un’s forces were not seen on the battlefield for around three weeks, Ukrainian special forces said.
The reports have been backed by South Korea’s spy agency, which said the North Korean troops had been withdrawn from the war frontline around the middle of January, the National Intelligence Service said earlier last week.
But on Friday, Mr Zelensky said the Russian Army had “brought back in North Korean soldiers” who were carrying out “new assaults” in the region partially occupied by Ukraine.
