North Korean soldiers sent to fight in Russia's Kursk region haven't been seen for several weeks, reports say.

North Korean soldiers previously fighting alongside Russia's army on the Kursk front line appear not to have been engaged in combat since mid-January, South Korea's spy agency told AFP on Tuesday, after Ukraine claimed they had been withdrawn following heavy losses.

Pyongyang is believed to have sent some 11,000 soldiers to help Putin’s army recapture a swathe of the Kursk region of Russia which Ukrainian forces seized in a surprise attack last summer. The Russian military has been gradually gaining ground in the attempt to force Ukrainian units out of Kursk.

A military source, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, described a marked improvement in the precision in all the more than 20 North Korean ballistic missile

North Korean troops, largely special ops forces, have suffered high casualties in bloody assaults not unlike other units, including prison units.

"The worst problem we are facing is the one coming from North Korea," the head of Kyiv's military intelligence agency said in the fall.

It also shed some light on the mindset and training of the conscripted North Korean soldiers sent to fight Russia’s war a continent away from their home. Highly disciplined, ready to die but also very young and with little battlefield experience they elicited curiosity and even some pity from the Ukrainian soldiers who captured them during two separate missions on Jan.

North Korean ballistic missiles have been striking targets in Ukraine with increasing accuracy in recent weeks compared to over the past year — suggesting the Hermit Kingdom is using the battlefield as a testing ground for its new tech.