North Korea, which has reportedly dispatched ground troops to join Russia's war against Ukraine, has also sent fighter pilots who could fly Russian warplanes, a report said on Monday.
A government official in South Korea claimed that North Korea last month dispatched fighter pilots to Vladivostok, a city in the Russian Far East, ahead of the first deployment of its ground troops on October 8, South Korean media TV Chosun reported.
This could relate to training on Russian combat aircraft supplied to North Korea, the report said. But it could not rule out that Russia, which has suffered from a shortage of pilots during the Russia-Ukraine War, had requested assistance from the North.
Russia would be the first overseas deployment for the North's combat pilots since the Vietnam War. They also operated in Syria and Egypt during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Newsweek has reached out to the North Korean embassy in China for comment by email.
Both Ukraine and South Korea have accused North Korea, ruled by Kim Jong Un, of sending troops to support Russian President Vladimir Putin's war effort. The Kremlin claimed that cooperation with the North "is not directed against third countries."
On Monday, a North Korean representative to the United Nations refuted the accusations from Kyiv and Seoul for the first time, claiming their allegations were "groundless stereotyped rumors" and that Pyongyang enjoys a legitimate and cooperative relationship with Moscow.
Seoul is mulling sending intelligence personnel to Ukraine to monitor any North Korean troops fighting with the Russians, Yonhap News Agency in South Korea reported on Tuesday. It is also considering supplying weapons to Kyiv.
North Korea possesses over 900 combat aircraft, the United States Defense Intelligence Agency said in a report in 2021. The country's most capable combat aircraft were procured from the Soviet Union, including Su-25 ground-attack aircraft and MiG-29 fighter jets.
The Su-25 has seen extensive use in the skies of Ukraine, where several have been shot down.
Dutch open-source intelligence defense analysis website Oryx has visually confirmed that 114 Russian aircraft have been destroyed and 15 damaged since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine in February 2022, including 34 Su-25 aircraft.
The U.S. intelligence report also claimed that because of fuel shortages and concerns over aging aircraft, the North's air force pilots got as few as 15-25 hours in the air every year, leaving them inadequately trained and unable to maintain combat readiness.
Meanwhile, the South's air force said on Tuesday that its commanders had met American counterparts during a meeting at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, 60 kilometers south of Seoul. The security environment was assessed amid the North's continued provocations and decision to send troops to Russia.
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