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SKorea: North Sent Munitions to Russia 03/18 06:06
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea has shipped around 7,000 containers
filled with munitions and other military equipment to Russia since last year to
help support its war in Ukraine, South Korea's defense minister said Monday.
Shin Won-sik shared the assessment at a news conference hours after the
South Korean and Japanese militaries said the North fired multiple short-range
ballistic missiles into its eastern waters, adding to a streak of weapons
displays amid growing tensions with rivals.
Since the start of 2022, North Korea has used Russia's invasion of Ukraine
as a distraction to ramp up its weapons tests and has also aligned with Moscow
over the conflict, as leader Kim Jong Un tries to break out of diplomatic
isolation and join a united front against the United States.
U.S. and South Korean officials have accused North Korea of supplying Russia
with artillery shells, missiles and other equipment in recent months to help
fuel its war on Ukraine, saying that such arms transfers accelerated after a
rare summit between Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin in September.
North Korea in exchange possibly received badly needed food and economic aid
and military assistance aimed at upgrading Kim's forces, according to South
Korean officials and private experts. Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the
existence of an arms deal between the countries.
During a news conference in Seoul, Shin said the South Korean military
believes the North, after initially relying on ships, has been increasingly
using its rail networks to send arms supplies to Russia through their land
border.
In exchange for sending possibly several million artillery shells and other
supplies, North Korea has received more than 9,000 Russian containers likely
filled with aid, Shin said. He raised suspicions that Russia could be providing
North Korea with fuel, possibly in defiance of U.N. Security Council sanctions
that tightly cap the country's imports of oil and petroleum products.
While fuel shortages likely forced North Korea to scale back winter training
activities for its soldiers in recent years, South Korea's military assesses
that the North expanded such drills this January and February, Shin said.
North Korea's latest missile launches came days after the end of the latest
South Korean-U.S. combined military drills that the North portrays as an
invasion rehearsal.
Shin said the North may dial up its testing activity before the April 10
parliamentary elections in South Korea, which is shaping up as a confidence
vote for conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has taken a harder line than
his liberal predecessor over North Korean nuclear ambitions and threats.
Animosity between the war-divided Koreans has recently worsened, with both
countries taking steps to breach a 2018 bilateral military agreement on
reducing border tensions. Kim vowed in January to abandon the North's
long-standing goal of reconciliation and to rewrite its constitution to declare
the South its most hostile adversary.
While most of North Korea's recent missile tests seem aligned with its
stated goals of augmenting its frontline forces with new weapons systems, the
South Korean and U.S. militaries are also evaluating whether some North Korean
tests are aimed at verifying the performance of weapons it intends to send to
Russia, Shin said.
North Korean state media said Monday that Kim sent a message of
congratulations to Putin over his reelection as Russia's president. On
Saturday, Kim's sister issued a statement through state media saying that her
brother has used a Russian luxury limousine recently gifted by Putin and
praised the car's "special function," in another effort to boost the visibility
of the countries' bilateral ties.
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