"North Korean troops dispatched to Russia are not the best, but in their teens and early 20s."

Amid the imminent deployment of North Korean troops to Russia, foreign media analyzed that the combat capabilities of North Korean soldiers gathered this time may not be at the level of the best troops.

On the 27th of local time, the U.S. daily Wall Street Journal diagnosed that North Korean soldiers gathering on the Russian front line may not be the "best and most outstanding" soldiers of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Citing released North Korean military footage and government officials, the Journal said the soldiers who gathered in Kursk are believed to have just been drafted at a young age from their teens to early 20s.

Military experts analyzed that they appear to be relatively small in height and size, reflecting the widespread malnutrition throughout North Korea.

Earlier, South Korean and Ukrainian authorities said North Korea is expected to send a total of 12,000 troops, including those from the 11th Army, a special operations unit, to help Russia at war in Ukraine.

The 11th Army, also known as the Storm Corps, is North Korea's elite special forces unit.

However, the Wall Street Journal pointed out that North Korea's special forces training mainly focuses on infiltrating the mountainous South and carrying out assassinations and destruction of infrastructure, which is far from the war in Ukraine, which takes place in the form of a trench war on a wide plain.

"It is highly likely that the pitiful-faced North Korean soldiers have never come out of North Korea," he said. "The North Korean military operates old and aging conventional military equipment."

In this regard, it is interpreted that Chairman Kim Jong-un may intend to send so-called "bullet-for-gun" troops to Russia as an advance party to see the reaction of the Russian government at home and abroad, especially the Russian government, to the dispatch of troops to Russia.