Seoul calls for “immediate withdrawal” of North Korean troops from Russia | News about the Russia-Ukraine war

South Korea summons the Russian ambassador over Pyongyang's alleged sending of soldiers to support Moscow's war in Ukraine.

South Korea has summoned Russia's ambassador to criticize Pyongyang's decision to send hundreds of soldiers to support Moscow's war in Ukraine, the Foreign Ministry said, calling for their immediate withdrawal.

In Pyongyang's first foreign deployment of its kind, about 1,500 special forces soldiers have arrived in Russia and are expected to head to the front after acclimatization, Seoul's spy service said on Friday, adding that more forces are expected to leave soon.

South Korea has long accused the nuclear-armed North of supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a military deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.

Seoul expressed its “great concern over North Korea's recent troop deployment to Russia and strongly called for the immediate withdrawal of North Korean forces,” Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun told Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev on Monday.

Seoul's spy service released detailed satellite images that purportedly showed the first group of 1,500 North Korean special forces from the elite “Assault Corps” arriving in Vladivostok on Russian military ships.

Any military cooperation between the two countries violates several United Nations Security Council resolutions, said Vice Foreign Minister Kim.

“We strongly condemn North Korea’s illegal military cooperation, including the deployment of troops to Russia,” the State Department quoted him as saying.

“We will respond together with the international community by mobilizing all available resources against actions that threaten our core security interests.”

Zinoviev “emphasized that cooperation between Russia and North Korea … is not directed against South Korea's security interests,” the Russian Embassy said in a statement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said on Monday that Moscow would “further expand this cooperation.”

“North Korea is our close neighbor and partner, and we are developing relations in all areas, and this is our sovereign right,” he told reporters in Moscow, but declined to comment on whether Russia was deploying North Korean troops.

Later on Monday, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol spoke with NATO chief Mark Rutte and called on the alliance to take “concrete countermeasures” against growing Russian-North Korean cooperation.

NATO has not yet confirmed the North Korean troop deployment, but Rutte said in a post on X that it would mean “a significant escalation” in the conflict.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who was in Seoul on Monday, called Russia's actions “reckless and illegal” and added that London would work with Seoul to respond, according to Yoon's office.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Pyongyang of preparing to send 10,000 troops to Russia and called for a strong international response on Sunday.

The United States said on Friday it could not confirm reports of fighting by North Korean troops, but said if true it would be a “dangerous development” in Russia's war against Ukraine.