ISTANBUL

North Korea said on Friday that any dispatch of its soldiers to Russia would conform to international law, marking its first official response to recent claims by South Korea that Pyongyang sent approximately 3,000 troops to support Moscow. The White House has also backed these assertions.

In a vaguely-worded statement, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jong Gyu addressed the allegations, saying, “If there is such a thing that the world media is talking about, I think it will be an act conforming with the regulations of international law.

“There will evidently exist forces which want to describe it as illegal one, I think,” he said in response to a question by state-run Korea Central News Agency.

Kim called Seoul’s claims as “the rumor of the dispatch” of North Korean troops to Russia, which, he said, the world media was “building up public opinion.”

North Korean Foreign Ministry “does not directly engage in the things of the Ministry of National Defense, and does not feel the need to confirm it separately,” Kim added.

South Korea, in turn, has pledged to consider increasing arms supplies to Ukraine should military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow continue to deepen.