North Korea is benefiting from its troops fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine, gaining experience that makes Pyongyang “more capable of waging war against its neighbours” a senior US official has warned.
Russia has forged closer diplomatic and military ties with North Korea since Moscow’s full invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
More than 12,000 North Korean troops are in Russia and last month began fighting against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, Dorothy Camille Shea, the deputy US ambassador to the UN, told the UN security council.
North Korea “is significantly benefiting from receiving Russian military equipment, technology and experience, rendering it more capable of waging war against its neighbours”, Shea told the 15-member council, which met over what Pyongyang said was a test of a new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile on Monday.
“In turn, the DPRK will likely be eager to leverage these improvements to promote weapons sales and military training contracts globally,” she said, using the acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
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North Korea’s UN ambassador, Kim Song, justified Monday’s missile test as part of a plan to enhance the country’s defence capabilities. He accused the US of double standards.
“When the civilian death toll exceeded 45,000 in Gaza, United States embellished Israel’s nefarious mass killing atrocity as the right to self-defence … Meanwhile, it takes issue with legitimate exercise of the right to self-defence of the DPRK,” Kim told the security council.
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