The arrival of North Korean troops on the battlefield last October, alongside troops from Moscow, was very worrying news for kyiv. Ukraine now appears to be learning more about their usefulness within the Kremlin-led military. On Saturday January 11, Ukraine announced that it had captured two North Korean soldiers in the Russian region of Kursk, and said it was proceeding with their interrogation. One of them, aged 19, said he was thinking of coming to Russia to train, not to fight, said South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), which is cooperating with its counterpart. Ukrainian, the SBU.
But the logbook of another North Korean soldier, recovered by kyiv on the battlefield after his death on December 21, offers, according to THE Wall Street Journalmacabre details concerning the role of thousands of North Korean units in Kursk.
Some excerpts were recently made public by Ukrainian special operations forces. Between two scenes of daily life on the front and passages expressing the young soldier’s love for his North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, crude diagrams sketched in blue ink detail the dark military tactics that must be applied North Korean soldiers deployed in support on the front. When a Ukrainian drone approaches, for example, a soldier called “bait” remains stationary to attract the drone, so that other soldiers can try to shoot it down. “Even at the cost of my life, I will carry out the orders of the Supreme Commander without hesitation,” reads an adjacent page. “I will show the world the bravery and sacrifice of Kim Jong Un’s special forces.”
This tactic reflects, according to the American daily, the little consideration given by the Russian army to these North Korean reinforcements. “In their first weeks of combat, North Korean soldiers have been deployed recklessly, according to drone footage from Ukrainian special forces and military experts. They are crossing open fields on foot and without armored vehicles or artillery reinforcements “, their dark camouflage uniforms are very visible against the white snow. Their training and integration with Russian forces appear inadequate,” says the newspaper, which also reports that many North Korean soldiers choose death rather than capture. The Ukrainian government has also said that the capture of the two men it is holding was not easy. “The Russians and other North Korean soldiers are finishing off their wounded and doing everything to erase evidence of the participation of another state” in the war, said Volodymyr Zelensky.
North Korean soldiers on the front lines
The first glimpses of the North Koreans in action depict them under duress, frightened or confused, according to a video compilation released by the Ukrainian military and verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal. “In the compilation, groups of North Korean troops cower in place or try to flee pursuing Ukrainian drones,” the WSJ says.
According to various counts, nearly 12,000 North Korean soldiers – often very young – were deployed in support of the Russian region of Kursk last October, a few months after the signing of a mutual defense pact between the two countries. Information never publicly confirmed by either Moscow or Pyongyang. As the only Russian territory partly under Ukrainian control, Kursk is seen as a potential currency in any talks that would stop the fighting.
First kept on the sidelines for months, North Korean soldiers have for several weeks played a crucial role in retaking territory lost by Russia and in resisting the counter-offensive currently launched by Ukraine. About 30% of the troops sent to North Korea have already been deployed for front-line combat, according to Doo Jin-ho, an analyst at the Korea Institute of Defense Analysis in Seoul cited by the WSJ. “The North Koreans are helping to ensure that the border is not crossed and freeing Russian soldiers to seek breakthroughs in other regions,” explains the analyst. According to Volodymyr Zelensky, more than 4,000 North Koreans have died or been injured since arriving on the battlefield. According to the US government, 1,000 of them died in the last week of December alone.