South Korea’s spy agency says North Korea shipped more than a million artillery shells to Russia

ABC News:

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s top spy agency believes North Korea sent more than a million artillery shells to Russia since August to help fuel Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, according to a lawmaker who attended a closed-door briefing Wednesday with intelligence officials.

North Korea and Russia have been actively boosting the visibility of their partnership in the face of separate, deepening confrontations with the United States. Their diplomacy — highlighted by a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Putin in September — has triggered concerns about an arms arrangement in which North Korea supplies Russia with badly needed munitions in exchange for advanced Russian technologies that would strengthen Kim’s nuclear-armed military.

Both Pyongyang and Moscow have denied U.S. and South Korean claims that the North has been transferring arms supplies to Russia.

According to lawmaker Yoo Sang-bum, the South Korean National Intelligence Service believes the North shipped more than a million artillery shells to Russia through ships and other transport means since early August to help boost Russia’s warfighting capabilities in Ukraine. Those shells would roughly amount to two months’ worth of supplies for the Russians, Yoo said.

The agency believes North Korea has been operating its munitions factories at full capacity to meet Russian munition demands and has also been mobilizing residents to increase production, Yoo said. There are also signs that North Korea dispatched weapons experts to Russia in October to counsel Russian officials on how to use the exported North Korean weapons.