North Korean soldiers march during a military parade to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in Pyongyang, North Korea, 08 February 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE/KCNA
Hundreds of Russian servicemen have recovered from injuries sustained while fighting in Ukraine at facilities in North Korea, Moscow’s ambassador to Pyongyang Alexander Matsegora told Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Sunday.
While North Koreans had “always viewed Russians very positively”, Matsegora said, that tendency had “become even more pronounced in recent years. Wherever we go, we are greeted with a smile. People try to talk to us in Russian and offer assistance.”
According to Matsegora, when the Songdowon children’s camp near the city of Wonsan invited the children of Russian servicemen killed in the war in Ukraine to be their guests, they refused to take any payment for their hospitality. “When we offered to pay at least part of the costs, our friends took great offence,” Matsegora continued.
Stressing the ever-closer ties between the countries in fields including academia, agriculture and medicine, Matsegora said that both governments were now looking at what additional goods North Korea could supply to Russia.
While the Russian-North Korean Comprehensive Partnership and Cooperation Pact, which was signed by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang last year, was not previously known to cover the rehabilitation of Russian servicemen, the The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that the pact contained a secret clause on North Korea sending its troops to support the Russian army in Ukraine, in exchange for allowing them to “learn first hand how to execute a war”.
