The Russian language has become a compulsory subject in North Korean schools from the fourth grade, a Russian official said on Thursday.
Alexander Kozlov, Russia’s Natural Resources Minister, said at a meeting of the intergovernmental commission in Moscow: “I know that Russian has been introduced in schools in [North Korea] as a compulsory language for learning from the fourth grade.”
“In Russia, more than 3,000 school children are currently learning Korean. Most of them study Korean as a second or third foreign language,” he added.
Kozlov also said that North Korea has some 600 specialists in the Russian language and that the countries have deepened their higher education cooperation in the fields of banking, engineering, medicine and geology.
In turn, 300 university students in Russia study Korean, he continued.
Russia is also set to build a centre in North Korea for the provision of Russian-language education at Kim Chol Junior Normal University.
North Korean authorities have not commented on Kozlov’s remarks and it is unclear whether compulsory instruction in Russian has already begun.
It came after the Russian Embassy in Pyongyang said last week that it had been working to promote Russian language education for North Korean university students.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia and North Korea have deepened cooperation in political, military and economic domains.
North Korea has supplied weapons to Russia and sent troops to the front line in Ukraine and to demine the Kursk region.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un have met on several occasions to celebrate the ties between Moscow and Pyongyang, including in Beijing in September, when Putin thanked Kim for the “sacrifices” of his troops in the context of the war.
Earlier this month, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) warned that Russia was preparing to import as many as 12,000 North Korean workers to accelerate production of long-range Shahed-type attack drones at the notorious Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Russia’s Tatarstan.
Two of the world’s most active state-backed cybercrime units – Russia’s Gamaredon and North Korea’s Lazarus collective – have been observed sharing resources, according to Politico earlier this month.
Analysts at the cybersecurity firm Gen Digital found that the groups seem to be pooling tactics and infrastructure, indicating that they could be working together.
Michal Salat, the Director of Threat Intelligence at Gen Digital, told Politico that the discovery was “unprecedented.”
“I don’t recall two countries working together on [Advanced Persistent Threat] attacks,” he said, in reference to sustained, advanced intrusion campaigns usually orchestrated by nation-state actors.