(Seoul) At least 100 North Korean soldiers sent to fight alongside Russian forces against Ukraine were killed on the battlefield in December, South Korean lawmaker Lee Sung-kwon said Thursday.
Posted at 10:38 p.m.
“In December, they participated in real combat, during which at least 100 deaths occurred,” said Mr. Lee, after a briefing given by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to parliamentarians.
“The NIS also said the number of wounded is expected to reach nearly 1,000” among North Korean troops, the lawmaker added.
According to him, there are reports that “several North Korean losses, including those of high-ranking officers, occurred in Ukrainian missile and drone attacks, as well as in training accidents.”
According to the NIS, cited by Mr. Lee, the high number of casualties can be explained by “the unfamiliar battlefield environment, where North Korean forces are used as front-line assault units that the “we can sacrifice, and to their lack of capacity to counter drone attacks”.
The MP also noted “complaints among the Russian military that North Korean troops, due to their lack of knowledge about drones, are more of a burden than an asset.”
The NIS is “closely monitoring the possibility of further North Korean troop deployments, while anticipating that Russia may offer benefits in return, such as modernizing North Korea’s conventional weapons,” Lee said. .
Several thousand North Korean soldiers have been sent to Russia in recent weeks to support the Russian army, according to Westerners. For its part, the Kremlin has each time evaded questions on the subject, not wanting to confirm this information. Pyongyang has neither confirmed nor denied this unprecedented deployment.
On Tuesday, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, Oleksandr Syrsky, declared that, “for three days, the enemy has been carrying out intense offensive operations in the Kursk region, actively using units of the North Korean army », adding that it had already “suffered heavy losses”. A senior American official, for his part, reported “hundreds” of North Korean soldiers killed or injured in the Kursk region.
