North Korea and Russia agree to expand their economic cooperation
Associated PressSEOUL, South Korea — North Korea and Russia reached a new agreement for expanding economic cooperation following high-level talks in Pyongyang this week, the North’s state media said Thursday, as they continue to align in the face of their confrontations with Washington. Kozlov, who arrived in North Korea on Sunday, met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his top economic official, Premier Kim Tok Hun, before returning home on Wednesday, KCNA said. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in a closed-door briefing on Wednesday that an estimated 11,000 North Korean soldiers in late October were moved to Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops seized parts of its territory this year, following their training in Russia’s northeast. North Korea would be possibly getting anywhere between $320 million to $1.3 billion annually from Russia for sending its troops to Ukraine, considering the scale of the dispatch and the level of payments Russia has been providing to foreign mercenaries, according to a recent study by Lim Soo-ho, a South Korean analyst at an NIS-run think tank.