North Korea has begun construction of the Memorial Museum of Combat Feats in Pyongyang to glorify its army’s overseas operations, mainly in Russia’s Kursk region, where it helped the Russian army push out Ukrainian forces in 2024.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attended the launch ceremony of the museum dedicated to “the combatants of the armed forces of the Republic, who performed the brilliant military exploits and services in the military operations to liberate the Kursk Region of the fraternal Russian Federation at the cost of their blood and lives,” local state Korean Central News Agency reported on Friday.

Pyongyang covertly deployed some 10,000 to 12,000 North Korean army troops to Russia last year to help the struggling Kremlin forces push the Ukrainian army out of some 1,000 square kilometers of territory they had captured in Kursk after a surprise incursion on Aug. 6, 2024.

Ukrainian forces controlled the territory for more than six months, until the North Korean army helped the Russians to push them out in March 2025.

Russia and North Korea signed a comprehensive partnership treaty in the summer of 2024. While both initially denied reports of the latter’s troops entering battle, they later admitted it was true after the successful operation in Kursk.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously estimated that about 4,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded, while U.S. officials offered a lower estimate of around 1,200 casualties.

After reports of the removal of North Korean troops from the front line, they were spotted at war again, the Ukrainian Army General Staff said on Oct. 16, this time to support Russian military operations in Ukraine’s Sumy region, bordering Kursk.

“From the territory of the Kursk region, these units conduct reconnaissance activities using drones, identify the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and provide assistance in adjusting fire on the positions of Ukrainian units in Sumy,” the general staff said.