North Korean soldiers sent to war in Ukraine are pressured to commit suicide before being captured alive by the enemy, South Korea’s intelligence service said Monday. The organization has also revealed that, to date, nearly 300 soldiers from the secretive Asian country have died on the Ukrainian front, and another 2,700 have been wounded. The explanations were offered by deputy Lee Seong-kweun, of the ruling People’s Power Party, after a closed-door meeting of the South Korean National Intelligence Service (SNI) with deputies of the parliamentary intelligence commission.
Around 10,000 North Korean troops have been fighting, at least since October, shoulder to shoulder with Russian troops in the European war, according to US and South Korean authorities. Two of these soldiers from the Asian country have been captured in recent weeks in the western Russian region of Kursk by the Ukrainian side. The Ukrainian intelligence services (SBU) published his image last weekend. They were wounded and bandaged; one was lying on the bed; another was unable to speak. The prisoners have been transferred to kyiv for interrogation.
At the briefing held at the South Korean National Assembly, the SNI confirmed its participation in the interrogation of North Korean soldiers by the Ukrainian authorities. The agency has assured that the soldiers have not expressed any request for resettlement in South Korea, according to two legislators who attended the meeting cited by the AP agency.
For Ukraine, this is irrefutable proof of the Asian country’s support for Moscow in the war, a fact that has never been confirmed by either Russia or North Korea, countries bound since June by a pact that includes mutual defense in case of aggression. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has stressed the importance of the captures. “That task was not easy: normally, the Russians and other North Korean soldiers finish off their wounded and do everything possible to ensure that there is no evidence of another state’s involvement in the war against Ukraine,” he said on Saturday. on their social networks. Another North Korean soldier captured in December by the Ukrainian military was badly injured and died shortly after.
How Kim Jong-un’s soldiers fight, what orders they follow and what strategies they adopt is largely a mystery. They have not participated in an international war since they sent troops, between 1964 and 1973, to the Vietnam War (1955-1975). Its involvement in the Ukraine war is offering the first direct test of its military capabilities in decades; clues about their way of fighting and also about their methods and preventions when they fall into enemy hands. South Korea, a country with which it is technically still at war, and with which it shares a hot border line, is studying this deployment with interest. The destabilizing potential of North Korea’s quota for a war taking place on the other side of Eurasia is worrying in Seoul, and in the rest of the region’s capitals, from Beijing to Tokyo.
“Lack of understanding of modern warfare”
The South Korean SNI has attributed what it called “massive casualties” of North Korean soldiers to their “lack of understanding of modern warfare,” which would include the “useless” act of shooting at long-range drones, data that would have been derived from the analysis by the agency of a recently obtained combat video, according to information provided this Monday by Deputy Lee and collected by South Korean media. If anything has changed in the Ukrainian war, it is the widespread use of drones in combat.
As for taking one’s life, the newspaper Ukrainian Pravdarevealed this Monday a recent episode during a combat by the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces in the Russian Kursk region, in which 17 North Korean soldiers were killed. The next morning, as the Ukrainians approached the area, a North Korean survivor tried to trick the soldiers and blow himself up with a grenade. He died, but there were no victims or injuries among the kyiv troops, according to the aforementioned media.
Of the captured North Korean soldiers, one has stated that he wanted to return to his country. The other has expressed his desire to remain in Ukraine. One of the two had Russian-style documentation in the name of another person residing in the Russian region of Siberia, according to Ukrainian intelligence. The other was undocumented. From their testimony it is clear that they did not know that they were going to fight at the front, but rather to carry out training.
Zelensky has assured that he is willing to return them to his country if the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, is able to organize an exchange with Ukrainian soldiers captive in Russia. He has also said there could be other options for North Koreans who do not wish to return. “Those who express their desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korea will have that opportunity,” the Ukrainian president commented on social networks, along with a three-minute video in which the captured soldiers are seen.
The South Korean SNI has estimated that both belonged to the General Reconnaissance Office, a key agency of North Korean military intelligence, according to the Yonhap news agency.
North Korea’s participation has led to “a significant escalation” of the war on the Western Front, according to NATO. His learning of modern tactics is worrying, and also the technology he could be receiving from Russia in exchange for providing soldiers and ammunition. The situation could also take a turn in the coming weeks, after Donald Trump lands in the White House on January 20.
“There is a possibility that Trump seeks dialogue with Kim, since Trump himself considers his previous summits with Kim as important achievements during his first Administration,” the South Korean SNI has assured, according to the legislators present at the meeting. Spy agency sees chances of incoming US president engaging with North Korean leader. Trump met with the North Korean leader three times during his first term, including a first summit in Singapore in June 2018, and another in Hanoi in February 2019. The meeting in Hanoi ended without an agreement. Since then, talks between Washington and Pyongyang on North Korea’s atomic programs and denuclearization have stalled.
