North Korea is sending thousands of construction workers to help rebuild a war-torn Russian border region, a Russian official said Tuesday, as the Kremlin boasted of new steps in the deepening partnership between the two countries.
Sergei K. Shoigu, a close aide to President Vladimir V. Putin, met with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, in Pyongyang on Tuesday. It was his third visit to the North Korean capital since March.
Afterward, he told reporters that Mr. Kim had agreed to send 5,000 construction workers and 1,000 sappers — combat engineers — to Russia’s Kursk region. That is where North Korean troops fought alongside Russian forces this past winter and spring to push Ukrainian soldiers out of several hundred square miles of Russian territory. The sappers, he said, will work on demining the region.
There was no immediate confirmation in North Korean state media of the announcement by Mr. Shoigu, who was Russia’s defense minister until last year and now serves as the secretary of Mr. Putin’s Security Council. But in a video of Mr. Shoigu’s arrival distributed by Russian state media, Mr. Kim could be seen embracing the Russian visitor and telling him that “our cooperation is deepening.”
Mr. Shoigu told Mr. Kim that he was back in Pyongyang — he last visited June 4 — at the direction of Mr. Putin. “There is an order from the president,” Mr. Shoigu said. “It must be carried out.”
As many as 15,000 North Korean workers are already employed in Russia, South Korean intelligence officials said in April. Their labor violates U.N. Security Council sanctions but is of mutual benefit for both Moscow and Pyongyang. The North Korean government earns much-needed foreign currency by claiming much of the workers’ salaries, while Russia gets an infusion of help at a time when its labor force has been depleted by the war in Ukraine.
South Korea has reported a sharp uptick in North Korean laborers in Russia since last year, when South Korean officials said there were roughly 4,000 North Korean construction workers in Russia, each earning about $800 a month.
The plan announced by Mr. Shoigu on Tuesday would deepen that arrangement in a symbolically important region 4,000 miles from North Korea: Kursk, where an estimated 14,000 North Korean troops fought on Russia’s side for months until expelling Ukrainian forces from the area in April.
Mr. Shoigu described the 5,000 North Korean laborers to be sent to Kursk as two brigades of “military construction workers.” He said they would help fix electrical and communications lines, roads and buildings after the region is demined.
“This is a kind of fraternal aid of the Korean people and the leader Kim Jong-un to our country and to the Kursk region in particular,” Mr. Shoigu said.
It was not immediately clear how Russia would compensate North Korea for the workers. South Korean intelligence officials and analysts say that Russia has provided North Korea not only with fuel and food, but also with military materials and technologies in return for support in the war against Ukraine.
Mr. Shoigu said that Russia and North Korea were working on starting direct flights between their capitals for the first time in more than 30 years, according to Russian state media.
There were also sculptors and architects in the Russian delegation in Pyongyang on Tuesday, Mr. Shoigu said. Their job was to work on plans for memorials in North Korea and Russia to honor North Korea’s war dead in Kursk.
“The feat that Korean servicemen — now comrades in arms in the Kursk region — accomplished should of course be immortalized,” Mr. Shoigu said.
Choe Sang-Hun contributed reporting from Seoul.
Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
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