SEOUL, Nov. 11 (UPI) — Ukraine’s military intelligence has intercepted what it claims are radio communications between North Korean soldiers in Russia, amid media reports of a massive troop buildup ahead of an attack in the Kursk region.
The Defense Intelligence of Ukraine shared brief audio clips Sunday of soldiers speaking Korean.
“In the conversation, the DPRK soldier first calls for a ‘repairman’ and then orders the group to return immediately,” DIU said in a post on its website.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.
In another clip, the speakers can be heard exchanging coded terms that translate to “Seal One, Seal Two,” presumably to check their signals.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that some 11,000 North Korean troops were in the Kursk region of southwest Russia and had already begun skirmishing with Ukrainian soldiers.
“The first battles with North Korean soldiers open a new page of instability in the world,” Zelensky said in a video address Tuesday.
Ukrainian forces have occupied hundreds of square miles in Kursk since an incursion in August. The New York Times, citing U.S. and Ukrainian officials, reported Sunday that Russian troops are amassing 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, to launch an assault to regain territory.
CNN also reported on the troop buildup, saying an attack was expected in the coming days, according to a U.S. official.
The Pentagon has said that North Korean soldiers would be fair game on the battlefield.
“We fully expect that DPRK soldiers could be engaged in combat and if they are, they are legitimate targets,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said at a press briefing on Thursday.
North Korea and Russia have drawn closer since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with the two regimes signing a mutual defense pact in June.
South Korean officials have raised concerns that Moscow may be sharing missile and nuclear technology with Pyongyang in exchange for the troop deployment.
On Monday, Seoul’s military intelligence said that North Korea’s new Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile, test-fired on Oct. 31, could have been developed with Russian technical assistance.
According to Rep. Yu Yong-weon of the ruling People Power Party, the Defense Intelligence Agency determined in a report that the Hwasong-19 was a new type of ICBM with a longer fuselage and higher maximum altitude than the solid-fuel Hwasong-18.
However, the military has not detected any signs of a solid-fuel engine test in North Korea since March, leading to speculation that the new missile could have resulted from cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang under the guise of aerospace technology.
“It is assessed that the possibility of North Korea receiving support from Russia on technologies that can be applied to the development of ballistic missiles, under the name of ‘space technology cooperation,’ cannot be ruled out,” Yu quoted the military report as saying.