SOUTH KOREA PERSPECTIVE

Yonhap covers the opening of the Memorial Museum of Combat Feats at Overseas Military Operations in Pyongyang in detail, marking the first anniversary of the 'liberation' of Kursk. Seoul's intelligence agency estimates around 15,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to Russia since 2024, with approximately 6,000 killed or wounded — figures Moscow and Pyongyang have not confirmed. Korea Times publishes a deep analysis of Washington's 'North Korea reckoning': three essays in Foreign Affairs signal that Washington is abandoning the precondition of complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization before any engagement. For Seoul, the Russian-North Korean show of force in Ukraine — with an institutional memorial to match — validates the worst-case scenarios Korean intelligence had been tracking about the depth of the alliance.