North Korea will send military builders and sappers to help restore Russia’s western Kursk region after Ukraine’s incursion, Russian news agencies cited Moscow’s security chief as saying on Tuesday on a trip to Pyongyang.
Sergei Shoigu, secretary of Russia’s Security Council and a former defence minister with close ties to President Vladimir Putin, spoke after talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang, their second such encounter in just two weeks.
Shoigu said he was carrying out what he said were “special instructions” from Putin.
His visit came at a time when ties between Moscow and Pyongyang — who are drawing closer in the face of what they say is a hostile West — are developing at pace, and days after he said the first direct train since 2020 between Moscow and Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, had set off.
He said he hoped direct flights between Moscow and Pyongyang would also restart for the first time in more than 30 years.
Shoigu’s visit was likely to be scrutinised in the West as the United States, South Korea and Ukraine itself have accused North Korea of providing Russia with massive military assistance to keep its war against Ukraine going, something neither Moscow nor Pyongyang has publicly acknowledged.
Shoigu said the talks had lasted more than two hours.
He told a news conference that North Korea would soon start rebuilding Kursk after Moscow — helped by thousands of North Korean troops — expelled Ukrainian forces from there earlier this year after they staged a surprise incursion in August 2024.
“Chairman Kim Jong-un has decided to send one thousand sappers to Russia to demine Russian territory, as well as five thousand military construction workers to rebuild infrastructure facilities destroyed by the occupiers,” the Russian state news agency TASS cited Shoigu as saying.
“I think this work will begin in the near future,” he added, adding that certain areas would need to be demined first.
‘Message from Putin’
Shoigu, who previously visited Pyongyang and met Kim on March 21 and June 4, said he had passed Kim an unspecified message from Putin.
He said they had discussed US-Russian relations, Ukraine, the situation on the Korean Peninsula and other security questions that he did not specify.
An honour guard and Marshal Pak Jong-chon, who occupies the second most powerful position in the secretive North Korean military, met Shoigu off his plane.
Russia’s state Rossiiskaya Gazeta released a video of Kim — wearing a traditional Mao suit — hugging Shoigu on arrival before accompanying him to a hall with a long negotiating table.
“Two weeks have passed and we are meeting again,” said Kim, before chuckling.
“The president’s instruction must be fulfilled,” replied Shoigu, who agreed when Kim said Shoigu’s frequent visits showed that ties between Moscow and Pyongyang were getting stronger.
In a message last week, Kim called Putin his “dearest comrade” and praised their bilateral relations as a “genuine relationship between comrades-in-arms”.
Shoigu said his visit was linked to a strategic partnership treaty signed by Kim and Putin in June 2024, which included a mutual defence pact. Moscow later referenced the agreement when explaining the deployment of North Korean soldiers to Kursk.
Shoigu said he and Kim had discussed plans for a memorial complex in Pyongyang dedicated to the North Korean troops.
British military intelligence said this week that North Korean troops had suffered more than 6,000 casualties in Kursk. North Korea has not disclosed its losses.
The US and South Korea say North Korea has shipped ballistic missiles, anti-tank rockets and millions of rounds of ammunition for Russia to use in its war against Ukraine. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied weapons transfers.
A Reuters investigation in April 2025 found that millions of North Korean shells had made their way to the front lines in massive shipments by sea and then by train.
