South Korea’s top spy agency believes North Korea sent more than a million artillery shells to Russia since August to help fuel Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, according to a lawmaker who attended a closed-door briefing Wednesday with intelligence officials.
North Korea and Russia have been actively boosting the visibility of their partnership in the face of separate, deepening confrontations with the United States.
Their diplomacy — highlighted by a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Putin in September — has triggered concerns about an arms arrangement in which North Korea supplies Russia with badly needed munitions in exchange for advanced Russian technologies that would strengthen Kim’s nuclear-armed military.
Both Pyongyang and Moscow have denied US and South Korean claims that the North has been transferring arms supplies to Russia.
According to lawmaker Yoo Sang-bum, the South Korean National Intelligence Service believes the North shipped more than a million artillery shells to Russia through ships and other transport means since early August to help boost Russia’s warfighting capabilities in Ukraine.
Those shells would roughly amount to two months’ worth of supplies for the Russians, Yoo said.
The agency believes North Korea has been operating its munitions factories at full capacity to meet Russian munition demands and has also been mobilising residents to increase production, Yoo said.
There are also signs that North Korea dispatched weapons experts to Russia in October to counsel Russian officials on how to use the exported North Korean weapons.
NIS officials didn’t immediately respond to a request to confirm Yoo’s account of the meeting. The agency has a mixed record on tracking developments in North Korea, which is made difficult by Pyongyang’s stringent control of information.
There are concerns in South Korea that North Korea could receive sensitive Russian technologies that would enhance the threat of Kim’s nuclear weapons and missiles program. But the NIS believes it’s more likely that the Russian assistance would be limited to conventional capabilities, possibly including efforts to improve North Korea’s aging fighter aircraft fleets, Yoo said.
It’s also likely that North Korea is receiving Russian technological assistance as it pushes ahead with plans to launch its first military reconnaissance satellite, Yoo quoted the NIS as saying. Following consecutive launch failures in recent months, the North failed to follow through on its vow to attempt a third launch in October.