North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presided over a state ceremony honoring soldiers killed while fighting alongside Russia against Ukraine, state media said Friday.

Kim touched portraits of the dead, embraced grieving families, and awarded the title of “Hero of the Republic” to commanders and fighters, personally pinning medals to portraits on a wall of remembrance.

In his speech, he hailed the deployment as a “world-historic event” that secured North Korea’s survival and warned enemies that any clash with the Korean People’s Army would leave them “soulless corpses.”

Although he did not specify in his speech that they died in Russia’s war with Ukraine, he said they fought for the “liberation of the Kursk region.” 

The ceremony included concerts, a banquet for bereaved families, and plans for a memorial hall and monument in Pyongyang.

State TV later aired footage of an August 1 repatriation ceremony showing Kim receiving 20 flag-draped coffins flown back from Russia.

South Korea’s intelligence service has estimated North Korea’s death toll in the war at 600, with another four-thousand-100 injured — far higher than the figures implied in official coverage.