U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday Ukraine should strike back if North Korean troops crossed into Ukraine, adding he was concerned by the presence of North Korean troops in the Kursk region in Russia.
“I am concerned about it,” Biden said when asked about North Korean troops being present in the Kursk region.
“If they cross into Ukraine, yes,” Biden said when asked if the Ukrainians should strike back.
The Korean People’s Army, with an estimated 1.3 mln active personnel, is one of the world’s largest militaries, behind China and the US.
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters at a Monday briefing that the U.S. believes there are now 10,000 North Korean troops in Russia, up from the American estimate of 3,000 given by National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby last week.
North Korea could have the material for more than one hundred nuclear weapons, according to analysts’ estimates. It has successfully tested missiles that could strike the United States with a nuclear warhead.
Despite UN Security Council sanctions and past summits involving North Korea, South Korea, and the United States on denuclearization, Pyongyang continues to test ballistic missiles.
The United States and its Asian allies see North Korea as a grave security threat.
Between 2010 and 2020, military expenditure accounted for an estimated 20%-30% of North Korea’s GDP annually, according to the The World Factbook – CIA.
A Russian air force passenger plane stopped in North Korea late Sunday night before flying toward western Russia, possibly making an irregular landing on an unusual route toward Ukraine, according to NK News analysis.
In January, North Korea said it would spend nearly 16% of state expenditure on defence.
Behind closed doors in 2017, President Donald Trump discussed the idea of using a nuclear weapon against North Korea and suggested he could blame a U.S. strike against the communist regime on another country, according to a nbook that details key events of his administration. Trump’s alleged comments, were reported in an afterword to a book by New York Times Washington correspondent Michael Schmidt.
Kim Jong Un of the Kim family is the current Supreme Leader or Suryeong of North Korea. He heads all major governing structures: he is the general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and president of the State Affairs.
After the Japanese were defeated in World War II, the Soviet Union occupied Korea north of latitude 38° N, and there the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established as a communist state in 1948. Seeking to unify the peninsula by force, it launched an invasion of South Korea in 1950, initiating the Korean War.
Ties between Russia and North Korea entered a new phase earlier this year when Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed a new mutual defense agreement during a summit in Pyongyang.
The defense pact, which the Russian State Duma ratified last Thursday, states that the signatories will help one another in the event of an armed attack. The moment marks the closest North Korean-Russian relations since the Cold War.
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