A delegation of North Koreans attended Russian arms fair Oboronexpo 2014 last week, a spokesperson for the arms fair’s secretariat told NK News on Tuesday.

The news confirms reports by Radio Free Asia’s Korean language service, which reported on Monday that a North Korean delegation arrived at the conference on Wednesday to take part in one of the world’s largest arms fairs in the Moscow suburb of Zhukovsky.

“I have no idea what they were buying,” the spokesperson told NK News in a phone call, “they bought tickets and attended”. 

The delegation was “not government officials”, she insisted, but North Korean businessmen.