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By Kim Seung-yeon and Chae Yun-hwan
SEOUL, Oct. 31 (Yonhap) -- North Koreans soldiers will end up in "body bags" if they enter Ukraine and fight alongside Russia, a U.S. envoy to the United Nations has warned, urging Pyongyang to rethink joining the war against Kyiv.
Robert Wood, deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N., leveled the sharp warning at Pyongyang on Wednesday (New York time), as the representatives of the U.S. and its allies exchanged intense barbs with those of Russia and North Korea over the North's deployment of its troops to Russia.
"Should DPRK enter Ukraine, in support of Russia, they will surely return in body bags," Wood said during a U.N. Security Council (UNSC) meeting, calling North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"I would advise Chairman Kim to think twice about engaging in such reckless endangered behavior," he said, referring to the North's leader Kim Jong-un.
Wood's remarks came after the North's U.N. envoy, Kim Song, accused the United States, South Korea and other allies of "being culprits" that disturb peace and inflict harm on world security.
Washington and Seoul have confirmed the North has sent at least thousands of its soldiers to eastern Russia for possible deployment to the war front lines in Ukraine, a claim that Moscow and Pyongyang have not publicly acknowledged.
The Pentagon said it believes that North Korean soldiers have started arriving in western Russia and around 10,000 North Korean troops are training in eastern Russia to possibly augment Russian forces near Ukraine in the next several weeks.
Maintaining the ambiguous stance about the troops dispatch, Kim, the North's ambassador to the U.N., defended the North's relationship with Russia as conforming to international law and under their recently signed partnership treaty.
"If Russian sovereignty and security interests are exposed to and threatened ... we should respond to them with something, we will make unnecessary decisions," Kim said.
South Korea's top envoy to the U.N. strongly criticized North Korea's dispatch of its troops to Russia, saying they will be used as mere "cannon fodder," while their wages will end up in the pockets of the North's leader.
"As legitimate military targets, they will end up as mere cannon fodder, while the wages they are supposed to receive from Russia will end up squarely in Kim Jong-un's pocket," Ambassador Hwang Joon-kook said.
"It is tragic that they could have enjoyed a far better life only if they were born south of the DMZ," Hwang said. "Pyongyang's treatment of its young soldiers, its own people, as expendable will be never forgiven."
Hwang said any activities entailed with the North's troop dispatch to Russia are "clear" violations of multiple UNSC resolutions, noting that Pyongyang's "unprecedented" military support to Moscow will change the dynamic of geopolitics on both sides of the Eurasian continent.
"The Republic of Korea, in close cooperation with the international community, will respond resolutely to unlawful Russia-DPRK military cooperation, and will take corresponding measures, commensurate to ensuing developments," he said, using the South's official name.
elly@yna.co.kr
yunhwanchae@yna.co.kr
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