A new memorial in Pyongyang (North Korea's capital) suggests approximately 2,300 North Korean soldiers were killed fighting alongside Russian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, according to a BBC investigation using satellite imagery and official photographs of the site. The Memorial Museum of Combat Feats, unveiled on 26 April, features two 30-metre walls engraved with names, a cemetery with roughly 280 graves, and a columbarium housing additional remains — offering the first observable clues to a death toll that neither Pyongyang nor Moscow has ever officially disclosed. South Korea estimates at least 11,000 North Korean troops were deployed to help Russia repel a Ukrainian incursion into Kursk that began in August 2024, with Pyongyang believed to have received food, money, and military technology from Moscow in return.