North Korea: soldiers pushed to suicide in Ukraine

North Korea is encouraging its soldiers deployed to Russia to fight against Ukraine to commit suicide to avoid capture, a South Korean lawmaker reported Monday citing Seoul’s intelligence service.

“Notes found on dead soldiers indicate that North Korean authorities pressured them to commit suicide,” including “blowing themselves up (…) before capture,” he told reporters. Lee Seong-kweun, relaying information from South Korean intelligence.

According to him, memos recovered from corpses reveal that North Korea is using soldiers’ “hopes to join the Workers’ Party” in power in North Korea or “to benefit from an amnesty” to send them in combat, suggesting that some may be prisoners at home.

South Korea had spoken of units considered “cannon fodder”, possibly exchanged for Russian technological aid as North Korea seeks to strengthen its nuclear arsenal.

“Estimates indicate that the number of casualties among the ranks of North Korean forces has exceeded 3,000, including around 300 dead and 2,700 injured,” Lee Seong-kweun said.

Ukraine, the United States and South Korea accuse nuclear-armed Pyongyang of sending more than 10,000 troops to help Russian forces in their invasion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Saturday that two North Korean soldiers were currently taken prisoner and interrogated in kyiv.

Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang have acknowledged that North Korean troops had been deployed to fight Ukrainian forces.