North Korea will send 6,000 military workers and combat engineers to help rebuild Russia's Kursk region, Moscow's top security official said, in the latest show of growing ties between the two countries.

Thousands of North Korean laborers are already toiling in Russia. A new contingent is headed to the region where North Korean troops fought Ukraine.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Russia's top presidential security adviser Sergei Shoigu in Pyongyang on Tuesday and discussed a "special military operation" in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine,