Kim Jong-un honours engineer troops back from Russia's Kursk mission

Seoul [South Korea], December 13 : North Korea has held a high-profile welcoming ceremony in Pyongyang for its engineer troops who returned from Russia's western Kursk region after completing a mine-clearance mission, with leader Kim Jong-un paying tribute to nine soldiers who lost their lives during the deployment, Yonhap News Agency reported.
According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the ceremony took place on Friday to receive members of the 528th Regiment of Engineers, who were sent to Kursk in early August.
Pyongyang had dispatched around 1,000 engineer troops to assist Russian forces in clearing landmines that were planted by Ukrainian soldiers.
This marked one of North Korea's lesser-acknowledged deployments to support Russia, following the earlier dispatch of nearly 15,000 combat troops to aid Moscow in its war against Ukraine, as per Yonhap News Agency.
Addressing the gathering, Kim Jong-un welcomed the soldiers home and expressed gratitude for their safe return, while also acknowledging what he described as the "heartrending loss of nine lives."
He praised the regiment for completing what he said was an almost impossible task in a remarkably short time, according to Yonhap News Agency.
"You could work a miracle of turning a vast area of danger zone into a safe and secure one in a matter of less than three months, the task which was believed to be impossible to be carried out even in several years," Kim said.
He went on to criticise Western military forces, asserting that "the armed villains of the West, armed with whatever latest military hardware they are, cannot match this revolutionary army with an unfathomable spiritual depth."
During the ceremony, Kim conferred the Order of Freedom and Independence on the regiment and posthumously awarded the title of 'DPRK Hero' along with first-class state orders to the nine deceased soldiers.
DPRK is the abbreviation for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"One hundred and twenty days have passed since the moment when I had to dispatch you, combatants of this regiment, to the dangerous battleground; every day of this period seemed like a decade, just as when I had been waiting for the combatants of the special operations units, who had been involved in the liberation battles," Kim said, stressing that he felt the pain of waiting that he had "never experienced before."
Yongyang had remained silent about its deployment of additional engineer troops, which was previously known through Russian reports.
Saturday's report confirms the details of the deployment, including the duration and number of casualties.