Seoul, South Korea—— South Korea's military said on Friday it suspected North Korea was preparing to send additional troops to Russia after its soldiers suffered heavy casualties in a war between Russia and Ukraine.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff also assessed in a report distributed to reporters that North Korea is continuing to prepare to test an intercontinental ballistic missile aimed at reaching the United States.

President Donald Trump's return to the White House, where he met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times during his first term, could brighten Pyongyang's prospects for high-level diplomacy with the United States. Many experts say Kim may believe his evolving nuclear program and expanding military cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin could give him more trouble than he did during his 2018-19 summit with Trump. Big influence.

North Korea has been supplying Russia with large quantities of artillery and other conventional weapons and sent about 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia last October, according to U.S., South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence agencies. Seoul, Washington and other countries are concerned that Russia could transfer advanced weapons technology to North Korea to bolster its nuclear program.

North Korean soldiers are considered highly disciplined and well-trained, but their lack of combat experience and unfamiliarity with the flat plains that dominate much of the battlefields in the Russian and Ukrainian wars make them easy targets for drone and artillery attacks.

South Korea's intelligence agency said last week it assessed that about 300 North Korean soldiers were killed and another 2,700 injured. In early January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put the number of dead or injured in North Korea at 4,000, but the U.S. estimate was lower at around 1,200.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea is believed to be accelerating preparations to send more troops to Russia, but did not disclose how it reached that assessment.

Deepening military ties between North Korea and Russia could embolden Kim Jong Un in dealings with the United States and South Korea. At a major political meeting last month, Kim Jong Un recently vowed to implement the "sternest" anti-American policies. But many experts say Kim Jong Un may eventually be willing to sit down with Trump if he thinks the U.S. president can make concessions.

Their previous talks collapsed after Trump rejected Kim's offer to dismantle his main nuclear facilities, a limited denuclearization step in exchange for broad sanctions relief. Since then, Kim Jong Un has significantly accelerated the pace of weapons testing to expand his arsenal of nuclear missiles targeting the United States and South Korea.

In South Korea, there are concerns that Trump may abandon his goal of complete denuclearization of North Korea and instead focus on eliminating long-range missile programs that pose a direct threat to the United States while retaining a nuclear attack capability against South Korea. .

On Monday, Trump called North Korea a "nuclear power" while touting his personal relationship with Kim Jong Un. That caused a stir in South Korea, where Washington, Seoul and their partners have long avoided describing South Korea as a nuclear power, fearing it could be seen as accepting North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

"I'm very friendly with him. He likes me. I like him," Trump said at a news conference in the Oval Office after the inauguration. "He's a nuclear power now. But we get along great. I think he'll be happy to see me back."

South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Jeon Ha Kyu told reporters on Tuesday that efforts must continue to achieve denuclearization of North Korea as a prerequisite for achieving lasting peace on the Korean peninsula and the world. South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said it would coordinate closely with the Trump administration to achieve denuclearization.