SEOUL – Arrangements are currently being made by Pyongyang and Moscow for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s visit to Russia by the end of the year, local media reported Thursday, citing a Russian state-run news agency.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said that on top of preparations for Kim’s Moscow visit, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to Pyongyang is also being arranged, according to Tass.

If the visit materializes, it would mark the first meeting between Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin since June last year. Last year’s summit was held in Pyongyang. At the time, Putin expressed hopes that their next meeting would be held in Moscow.

The two leaders signed a defense agreement during the Pyongyang summit and have since expanded military and economic ties.

Early Thursday, South Korea’s military said the North is believed to have deployed at least 3,000 additional troops to Russia in the first two months of this year, despite heavy casualties among soldiers already sent to support Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

Seoul’s spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said earlier this year that North Korea is believed to have deployed about 11,000 soldiers to the Russia-Ukraine fronts in its first round of deployments around October last year.

“Of around 11,000 North Korean soldiers dispatched to Russia, 4,000 casualties have occurred, and it appears that some 3,000 or more were additionally dispatched in January and February,” the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in its latest update on the North.

Pyongyang has also so far supplied “a vast amount” of conventional weapons to Moscow, and that support is likely to continue, depending on the situation, the JCS added. The weapons include “a considerable amount of short-range ballistic missiles and around 220 (combined) 170 millimeter self-propelled howitzers and 240 mm rocket launchers.”

Despite its failed satellite launch observed in May last year, the North is gearing up for another attempt to put a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit with technological aid from Russia, the South’s military said. But it added that there are no “imminent” signs of another launch and that Pyongyang seems for now to be focused on technologically improving the rocket that would carry the satellite. The military said it is closely monitoring signs related to its technological progress and a potential follow-up launch.

Last May, Pyongyang attempted to put a military satellite into orbit, but the rocket carrying the satellite exploded in midair shortly after takeoff, according to the South’s military.

North Korean soldiers carry a fellow soldier apparently injured in a mine explosion at a construction site near the inter-Korean border, in an undated photo released by the South Korean military on Thursday. PHOTO: SOUTH KOREAN JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF/THE KOREA HERALD

The North has so far dismantled 11 transmission towers in the Demilitarized Zone as part of construction activities at the border area that it has been carrying out since last year.

A surveillance camera was installed in early February on a tower that has yet to be removed, and the South’s military is closely monitoring potential risks it could pose to operations carried out near the border.

Several North Korean casualties were observed after a mine explosion at a construction site near the border “a few days ago,” which marked the first such incident this year. Last year, there were around 20 such mine explosions that killed or injured several North Koreans.

The transmission towers were installed by Korea Electric Power Corp., South Korea’s power monopoly, in 2006, mainly to supply electricity to the now-shuttered joint industrial park in the North’s border city of Kaesong. But the power supply has been suspended since February 2016 due to Pyongyang’s fourth nuclear test in the preceding month.

The removal of the power lines and transmission towers appears to be part of Pyongyang’s attempt to sever ties with Seoul.

The North scaled back its winter military training this year, as soldiers are being mobilized for the construction of factories and border-area power lines, training for additional deployments to Russia and managing chronic energy shortages.

The report comes amid concerns about North Korea’s advancing nuclear weapons program fueled by its strengthening ties with Russia.

With US President Donald Trump repeatedly hinting at a revival of his personal diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the JCS said that Pyongyang is taking steps to increase its bargaining power ahead of potential talks.

The strategy centers on the North boasting of its nuclear capabilities as well as releasing a series of criticisms of the South Korea-US joint military drills and the deployment of key US strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula.

Asia News Network/The Korea Herald