{"id":39018,"date":"2026-01-01T16:54:51","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T11:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=39018"},"modified":"2026-01-01T16:54:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T11:09:51","slug":"n-koreas-kim-hails-invincible-alliance-with-russia-in-new-years-letter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/n-koreas-kim-hails-invincible-alliance-with-russia-in-new-years-letter\/","title":{"rendered":"N. Korea’s Kim hails ‘invincible alliance’ with Russia in New Year’s letter"},"content":{"rendered":"
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has praised his troops fighting abroad as forging an “invincible alliance” with Russia in a new year’s message, state media said Thursday.<\/p>\n

Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine, according to South Korean and Western intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

At least 600 have died and thousands more have sustained injuries, according to South Korean estimates.<\/p>\n

Analysts say North Korea is receiving financial aid, military technology and food and energy supplies from Russia in return.<\/p>\n

Kim praised his men fighting in an “alien land”, congratulating their “heroic” defence of the nation’s honour and instructing them to “be brave”, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Thursday.<\/p>\n

“As the whole country is enveloped in a festive atmosphere of greeting the new year, I all the more miss you, who are fighting bravely on the battlefields in the alien land even at this moment,” he said, according to KCNA.<\/p>\n

“Behind you are Pyongyang and Moscow,” Kim said.<\/p>\n

The North Korean leader praised soldiers for strengthening the “invincible alliance” with Russia, calling on them to fight “for the fraternal Russian people”.<\/p>\n

And Kim hinted that more overseas action would take place this year, highlighting “remarkable feats you will perform on the overseas battlefields”.<\/p>\n

Kim marked the new year with a lavish celebration performance and speech at Pyongyang’s May Day stadium, state media said.<\/p>\n

Images shared by KCNA showed Kim accompanied by his wife Ri Sol Ju and his daughter Ju Ae, believed to be his likely successor.<\/p>\n

– Nationalist appeals –<\/strong><\/p>\n

Analysts say that North Korea’s deepening alliance with Russia has offered an economic lifeline to Kim’s regime and allowed him to rebuff US and South Korean overtures for dialogue.<\/p>\n

“Deployments to Russia, as well as overseas military operations or cooperation more broadly, are no longer exceptional but have become embedded as part of official defence policy,” Lim Eul-chul, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, told AFP.<\/p>\n

And Thursday’s state media coverage shows that Kim can also “frame the economic and military gains” from the troop deployments in nationalist appeals to his domestic audience, he added.<\/p>\n

On-the-ground accounts, however, paint a grim picture for North Korean troops embedded in Europe’s bloodiest war in decades.<\/p>\n

Pyongyang’s soldiers have been ordered to kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner, according to South Korea’s intelligence service and accounts by two North Koreans captured by Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The two men, held captive by Kyiv since January 2025 after sustaining injuries on the battlefield, have expressed a desire to defect to the South.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has praised his troops fighting abroad as forging an “invincible alliance” with Russia in a new year’s message, state media said Thursday. Pyongyang has sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine, according to South Korean and Western intelligence agencies. At least 600 have died […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39018"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39020,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39018\/revisions\/39020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}