They are fighting alongside the Russians. Some 300 North Korean soldiers were killed out of the thousands deployed by Pyongyang in Russia to support its war against Ukraine, a South Korean lawmaker said on Monday, citing Seoul’s intelligence service. Ukraine, the United States and South Korea have accused nuclear-armed Pyongyang of sending more than 10,000 troops to help Russian forces in their invasion.
“Estimates indicate that the number of casualties among the ranks of North Korean forces has exceeded 3,000, including around 300 deaths and 2,700 injuries,” Lee Seong-kweun told reporters after a South Korean intelligence briefing. . “Notes found on dead soldiers indicate that North Korean authorities pressured them to commit suicide,” including “blowing themselves up before capture,” the elected official continued.
North Koreans questioned in Ukraine
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this Saturday that two North Korean soldiers were currently taken prisoner and interrogated in kyiv. The alleged involvement of a foreign army constituted a major escalation in the invasion of Ukraine launched nearly three years ago by Vladimir Putin and which is entering a critical phase with the imminent return of Donald Trump to the House White.
South Korea has spoken of units considered “cannon fodder”, possibly exchanged for Russian technological aid as the nuclear-armed North seeks to strengthen its arsenal. Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang have acknowledged that North Korean troops had been deployed to fight Ukrainian forces.
Rep. Lee Seong-kweun says memos recovered from corpses reveal North Korea is using soldiers’ ‘hopes to join Workers’ Party (ruling North Korea) or benefit from an amnesty” to send them into combat, suggesting that some could be prisoners in their country.
According to kyiv, the two captured North Koreans were injured in the Russian region of Kursk, where Ukrainian forces have occupied several hundred km2 since last August. “Ukraine is ready to hand over its soldiers to Kim Jong Un if he can organize their exchange for our fighters who are detained in Russia,” Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on his X account this Sunday.
-For those “who do not wish to return (to their country), there could be other possible options,” Volodymyr Zelensky added on Sunday, saying that those who “tell the truth about this war in Korean will have this opportunity.”
Military training in November
The Ukrainian intelligence service SBU released a video this Saturday showing the two prisoners in hospital bunks with bandages, one on the hands, the other on the jaw. Its South Korean counterpart, the NIS, said one of the two revealed during interrogation that he had received military training from Russian forces after arriving in November. “He initially thought he was being sent for training, then realized upon his arrival in Russia that he had been deployed” to the front, according to the NIS.
VideoTwo North Korean soldiers captured by Ukraine in Russia
In December, Volodymyr Zelensky said that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or injured” there, while Seoul put the figure at 1,000. Russia and North Korea have strengthened their military ties since the invasion of Ukraine. The two countries are notably linked by a mutual defense pact ratified in November.
