Written by Jo Min Park and Jun Geddy
SEOUL (Reuters) – After a battle in the snow-covered Kursk region of western Russia this week, Ukrainian special forces combed through the bodies of more than a dozen dead North Korean enemy soldiers.
Among them, they found one still alive. But when they approached him, he detonated a grenade, blowing himself up, according to a description of the fight Ukrainian special operations forces posted on social media on Monday.
The forces said that their soldiers survived the explosion unharmed. Reuters was unable to verify the incident.
But among mounting evidence from the battlefield, intelligence reports and defector testimony is that some North Korean soldiers are resorting to extreme measures while supporting Russia's three-year-old war with Ukraine.
“Self-detonation and suicide: This is the reality of North Korea,” said Kim, a 32-year-old former North Korean soldier who defected to the South in 2022, asking that his name be identified only by his surname for fear of reprisals. His family left in the north.
He added: “These soldiers who left their homes to fight there have been brainwashed and are really willing to sacrifice themselves for Kim Jong Un,” referring to the reclusive North Korean leader.
Kim, who was provided by the Seoul-based Association of Families of North Korean Prison Victims, told Reuters that he worked with the North Korean military in Russia for about seven years until 2021 on construction projects to earn foreign currency for the regime.
Ukrainian and Western assessments indicate that Pyongyang deployed about 11,000 soldiers to support Russian forces in the Kursk region in western Russia, which Ukraine seized in a surprise incursion last year. According to Kyiv, more than 3,000 people were killed or injured.
North Korea's mission to the United Nations in Geneva did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moscow and Pyongyang initially dismissed reports of the North's troop deployment as “fake news.” But Russian President Vladimir Putin did not deny in October that North Korean soldiers were currently in Russia, and a North Korean official said that any such deployment would be legal.
This week, Ukraine released videos of what it said were two captured North Korean soldiers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that one of the soldiers expressed his desire to remain in Ukraine, and the other to return to North Korea.
“One last bullet”
North Korea's deployment into Russia is its first major involvement in a war since the 1950-1953 Korean War. North Korea reportedly sent a much smaller contingent to the Vietnam War and to the civil conflict in Syria.
The United States warned that the Russian test would make North Korea “more capable of waging war against its neighbors.”
North Korean leader Kim previously praised his army, describing it as “the strongest in the world,” state media reported. Propaganda videos released by the regime in 2023 showed bare-chested soldiers running across snowy fields, jumping into frozen lakes and hitting blocks of ice for winter training.
But a South Korean lawmaker, briefed by the country's spy agency, on Monday said the numbers of North Korean soldiers wounded and killed on the battlefield indicates they are unprepared for modern warfare, such as drone attacks, and may be used as “cannon fodder.” . By Russia.
He added that what is most disturbing is that there are indications that these forces have received instructions to commit suicide.
“Recently, it was confirmed that a North Korean soldier was in danger of being captured by the Ukrainian army, so he shouted for General Kim Jong Un and took out a grenade to try to blow himself up, but he was killed,” Lee Seong said. -Koen, a member of the Intelligence Committee of the South Korean Parliament, said.
He added that the diaries carried by dead North Korean soldiers also show that North Korean authorities emphasized self-destruction and suicide before arresting them.
When asked for more details about the cases he referred to, he declined to elaborate, saying it was information from Ukraine that had been shared with South Korea's National Intelligence Service. NIS did not return calls seeking comment Tuesday.
Yang Ok, a defense analyst at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the suicide of soldiers or spies not only shows loyalty to Kim Jong Un's regime, but is also a way to protect their remaining families back home.
Ukraine's Zelensky said on Sunday that Kiev is ready to hand over captured North Korean soldiers to their leader Kim Jong Un if he can facilitate their exchange with Ukrainians detained in Russia.
However, for some North Korean soldiers, being arrested and sent back to Pyongyang would be seen as a fate worse than death, said Kim, the North Korean defector and former soldier.
“Becoming a prisoner of war means treason. Being captured means you are a traitor. Leave one last bullet, this is what we talk about in the army,” he said.
