By Phil Stewart, Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -North Korea's deployment to Russia to aid its war against Ukraine has the potential to lengthen the already 2-1/2-year old conflict and draw in others, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday.
Some 10,000 North Korean forces have already been deployed to eastern Russia, wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian equipment, Austin said, in what he added increasingly looked like a deployment to support Russia's combat operations in the Kursk region, near the border with Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion into Kursk in August and hold hundreds of square kilometers of territory there.
After talks with his South Korean counterpart at the Pentagon, Kim Yong-hyun, Austin called the deployment a "dangerous and destabilizing escalation."
"It does have the potential of lengthening the conflict or broadening the conflict," Austin told reporters.
Asked what he meant by broadening the conflict, and whether other countries might join the fighting, Austin responded cautiously: "It could encourage others to take action, different kinds of action. ... There are a number of things that could happen."
If North Korea aids Russia's war, North Korean troops can expect to be targeted by Ukrainian troops using weapons provided by the United States and its allies, and some will likely die on the battlefield, Austin added.
"If they are fighting alongside of Russian soldiers, they are co-belligerents, and we have every reason to believe that ... they will be killed and wounded as a result of that," Austin said.
South Korea has warned that Pyongyang would learn valuable lessons from its troops engaging in combat and witnessing modern warfare by helping Russia, and that constituted a direct military threat to South Korea.
Speaking alongside Austin, Kim cautioned that North Korea, in exchange for the deployment, was likely to seek Russian technology on tactical nuclear weapons, ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.
"I believe this can result in the escalation of the security threats on the peninsula," Kim said, speaking through a translator.
South Korea has said it is considering sending a team of military monitors to Ukraine to observe and analyze the expected North Korean deployment, something Kim said would be a great opportunity to learn more about North Korean forces.
"If we don't send our observers or analysis teams, it would mean that we are not faithfully doing our jobs," he said. The Ukraine conflict broke out when Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022 and has since developed into a war of attrition largely fought along front lines in eastern Ukraine, with huge numbers of casualties on both sides.
The United States has said the North Korean deployment could be further evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was having trouble filling military ranks after more than 600,000 casualties so far, according to U.S. estimates.
Austin noted he was already seeking to replenish his arms inventories by turning to North Korea and Iran.
"We know that Putin has gone tin-cupping to get weapons from (North Korea) and Iran. Turning to a pariah state like North Korea just underscores how much trouble he is in," the defense secretary said.
He and Kim both called on North Korea to withdraw its forces. But it was unclear whether there were any steps Washington or its allies could take to prevent Pyongyang from joining the war.
"This is something that we're going to continue to watch, and we're going to continue to work with allies and partners to discourage Russia from employing these troops in combat," Austin said.
Putin has not denied the involvement of North Korean troops in the war but said it was Russia's business how it implements a partnership treaty he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed in June.
North Korea has not acknowledged the deployment but said if such a move that "world media" were talking about was true, it would be done in compliance with international law.