North Korea’s deployment of troops to support Russian military aggression against Ukraine would mark its “de facto entry” into the war and may subsequently bring changes to the security environment in Asia, a Japanese diplomat who recently left the post of ambassador to Ukraine said Tuesday.
Amid reports that North Korea has already sent a batch of troops to Russia for training, former Ambassador to Ukraine Kuninori Matsuda said during an interview in Tokyo that Pyongyang’s participation would mean that the war in Europe has become “completely linked with security in East Asia.”
Kuninori Matsuda, former Japanese ambassador to Ukraine, speaks at an interview in Tokyo on Oct. 22, 2024. (Kyodo)
Matsuda, whose three-year tenure covered the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, called for the need to impose pressure on Russia and North Korea, and emphasized that Japan should perceive the ongoing war as “its own issue.”
He also said Japan and the United States should take North Korea’s troop deployment “seriously,” noting that the regional security situation could drastically change once soldiers return to the Korean Peninsula having experienced joint operations in battle.
Matsuda said North Korea’s deployment of troops could also mean that Russia is lacking enough military manpower in the war that is now in its third year.
Last Friday, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said North Korea has sent about 1,500 special forces troops to Russia’s Far East, in a sign that the military cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang is extending beyond the provision of weapons.
Ukraine ambassador to the United Nations Sergiy Kyslytsya said Monday that approximately 11,000 North Korean infantry troops are being trained in Russia’s East, and that “these troops are expected to be ready for war against Ukraine by Nov. 1.”
Japan, the sole Asian member of the Group of Seven industrialized nations, has moved in lockstep with the United States and European countries in imposing sanctions on Moscow. It has also offered assistance to Ukraine in fields such as minesweeping and by providing nonlethal defense equipment in line with the constraints in place under its pacifist Constitution.
Matsuda, 65, who will soon retire from the Foreign Ministry following his return to Japan earlier this month, recalled that he was “always thinking” about what his government could do to meet the needs of the Ukrainian people.
“I wanted to avoid a situation in which necessary things are not supplied at the right moment while useless discussions are taking place,” he said.
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