We knew it was happening all along, but it was only a matter of time before both Russia and North Korea confirmed to the world the inevitable fact that their relationship is more than rhetoric. Six months after the first North Korean soldiers were deployed to the Kursk region, the Kim regime has finally admitted that the country’s armed forces have ‘participated in the operations for liberating’ the area, in what marked ‘a new chapter of history’ in relation to the ‘firm militant friendship between the two countries of the DPRK and Russia’. Only days earlier, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, Valery Gerasimov, lauded the ‘heroism and fortitude’ of the North Korean troops.
Russia and North Korea have long been reluctant to tell the world that it was not just North Korean artillery and missiles, but also manpower, being sent in Moscow’s direction from its Cold War client state, despite clear evidence to the contrary.
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