If Russia still tries to hide it, the presence of North Korean soldiers in Ukraine, alongside Russian troops, is no longer in doubt. Inevitably, Pyongyang’s army suffered losses. According to a South Korean lawmaker, citing Seoul’s intelligence service, nearly 300 North Korean soldiers have been killed out of the thousands deployed by Pyongyang to Russia to support its war against Ukraine.
“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 told reporters after a briefing by the South’s intelligence service. -Korean (NIS). In December, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or injured” there, while Seoul put the figure at 1,000.
“Notes found on dead soldiers indicate that North Korean authorities pressured them to commit suicide”, including by having themselves “exploded before capture”, continued this Monday, January 13 Lee Seong-kweun , member of the intelligence committee in Parliament. In total, according to South Korean intelligence estimates, no less than 12,000 soldiers were deployed to fight Ukraine.
Also on Monday, Ukrainian special forces announced on Telegram messaging that they had killed “17 North Korean soldiers” and that an 18th had “blown himself up with a grenade” during an “assault” led by the latter.
Two North Korean soldiers detained in kyiv
On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky announced that two North Korean soldiers were currently taken prisoner in the Kursk oblast, Russia. Ukraine’s intelligence service, SBU, said the two men, taken prisoner on January 9, are now in kyiv and receiving medical treatment. The Ukrainian president released photos of the two captured soldiers, showing one of them with his head and chin bandaged, while the other has both hands fully bandaged. “This task was not easy,” he said in a message on Telegram. “Usually, Russia and other North Korean military personnel finish off their wounded and do everything possible to ensure that there is no evidence of the participation of another state – North Korea – in the war against Ukraine. be preserved.”
Volodymyr Zelensky also shared a photo of a Russian military ID card listing Turan, in the Russian republic of Tuva, which shares a border with Mongolia, as his birthplace. But the soldier holding the ID card told interrogators that the document was issued to him in the fall of 2024, in Russia. The same soldier also told intelligence services that he was born in 2005 and has served North Korea as a rifleman since 2021. The second soldier, injured in the jaw, declared in writing that he thought he was born in 1999 and had served North Korea as a scout sniper since 2016.
“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 on Sunday. For those “who do not wish to return (to their country), there could be other possible options,” he added, saying that those who “tell the truth about this war in Korean will have this opportunity.”
The Kremlin declined to comment on this statement on Monday, through its spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov. Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang has officially acknowledged that North Korean troops had been deployed to fight Ukrainian forces. South Korea has spoken of units considered “cannon fodder”, possibly exchanged for Russian technological aid as North Korea seeks to strengthen its nuclear arsenal. According to South Korean MP Lee Seong-kweun, 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 of an amnesty” to send them into combat, suggesting that some could be prisoners in their country.