For Pyongyang, dead soldiers are a price worth paying for the rewards of friendship with Moscow <\/p>\n
A few years ago, it would have sounded fantastical<\/a> to suggest that massed North Korean soldiers would fight on a European battlefield \u2013 as a Ukrainian commander noted last month. Yet about 10,000 are now thought to be fighting for Moscow, and on Tuesday a US official reported that \u201cseveral hundred\u201d had died<\/a> in Russia\u2019s\u00a0Kursk region<\/a>.<\/p>\n North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world, with more than 1.25 million personnel in a country of just 26 million. Despite its extraordinary nuclear and missile achievements, much of its vast stockpile of weaponry is thought to be out of date \u2013 though that hasn\u2019t stopped it shipping as much as $5.5bn worth<\/a> of arms and ammunition to Russia. The military has not engaged in large-scale combat since the end of the Korean war in 1953. At home, soldiers spend significant time trying to acquire food or basic supplies, including fuel.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For Pyongyang, dead soldiers are a price worth paying for the rewards of friendship with Moscow A few years ago, it would have sounded fantastical to suggest that massed North Korean soldiers would fight on a European battlefield \u2013 as a Ukrainian commander noted last month. Yet about 10,000 are now thought to be fighting … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}