Alexandre Matsegora, Russian ambassador to North Korea, dies ‘suddenly’

The Russian ambassador to North Korea, in office for more than ten years, “suddenly” died, his ministry announced Monday in the midst of strengthening the alliance in recent months between Moscow and Pyongyang.

In a statement and on Facebook, the Russian Foreign Ministry said “with deep regret” that Alexandre Matsegora, aged 70, died on December 6, 2025.

Without giving details on the causes of his death, Russian diplomacy paid him a warm tribute, emphasizing that, from the start of his career at the end of the 1970s, this Korean speaker had worked for economic and diplomatic cooperation between North Korea and the USSR, then Russia.

Strong rapprochement

“Under his wise and sensitive leadership, several generations of diplomats and Korean specialists were born,” the ministry said. Alexandre Matsegora, ambassador to Pyongyang since 2014, was “a driving force” in the “hard work over many years” leading to the “current unprecedented level of relations” between Russia and North Korea, according to Russian diplomacy.

The two States are currently pursuing a strong diplomatic, military and economic rapprochement. They have been united since 2024 by a mutual defense pact, signed after an official visit by Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang.

North Korea thus actively participated in Russia’s war effort by providing thousands of soldiers to repel, between the end of 2024 and the spring of 2025, the Ukrainian troops who had established a foothold in a small part of the Russian border region of Kursk.

It also supplies it with weapons and ammunition, according to South Korea, which suspects Moscow of transferring sensitive military technologies to it in exchange.