Ukraine faces a new threat in its conflict with Russia in the form of North Korean suicide troops

This week, Ukrainian special forces searched the remains of over a dozen dead North Korean enemy soldiers during a skirmish in Kursk, a snowy area in western Russia.

They discovered one of them still alive. However, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces described the combat on social media on Monday, saying that when they got closer, he blew himself up by detonating a grenade.

According to the military, none of their personnel were hurt in the explosion. Reuters was unable to confirm the occurrence.

However, there is growing proof from the battlefield, intelligence reports, and defector testimony that some North Korean soldiers are using harsh tactics in order to back Russia’s three-year conflict with Ukraine.

When Kim, a 32-year-old former North Korean soldier who defected to the South in 2022, remarked, “Self-detonation and suicides: that’s the reality about North Korea,” he asked to be identified only by his last name because he was afraid of retaliation against his family back in the North.

He went on to say, “These soldiers who left home for a fight there have been brainwashed and are truly ready to sacrifice themselves for Kim Jong Un,” alluding to the reticent North Korean leader.

Introduced to Reuters by the human rights organization NK Imprisonment Victims’ Family Association, located in Seoul, Kim claimed to have spent around seven years working on building projects for North Korea’s military in Russia until 2021 in order to generate foreign exchange for the government.

According to Ukrainian and Western estimates, Pyongyang has sent some 11,000 troops to assist Moscow’s forces in the Kursk area in western Russia, which Ukraine captured in an unexpected invasion last year. 

According to Kyiv, around 3,000 people have been murdered or injured.
A request for comment from North Korea’s delegation to the UN in Geneva was not immediately answered.

At first, rumors of the North’s troop deployment were written off as “fake news” by Pyongyang and Moscow. Although a North Korean official stated that any such deployment would be legal, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not deny in October that North Korean troops were present in Russia.

Videos of what Ukraine said were two arrested North Korean troops were made public this week. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated that one of the troops wanted to stay in Ukraine while the other wanted to go back to North Korea.

“ONE LAST BULLET”

North Korea’s deployment to Russia marks the country’s first significant military engagement since the Korean War in 1950–1953. According to reports, North Korea dispatched a far lesser force to both the Vietnam War and the Syrian civil war.

North Korea will become “more capable of waging war against its neighbours” as a result of the experience in Russia, the US has warned.

According to official media, North Korean leader Kim has praised his army as “the strongest in the world” in the past. In 2023, the dictatorship issued propaganda movies depicting troops jogging across icy landscapes, diving into frozen lakes, and pounding blocks of ice for winter training while wearing bare chests.

However, the number of North Korean troops killed and injured on the battlefield, according to a South Korean lawmaker briefed by the nation’s spy agency on Monday, indicates that they are potentially being used as “cannon fodder” by Russia and are ill-equipped for contemporary combat, including drone assaults.

“There are indications that these soldiers have been told to kill themselves, which is even more concerning,” he added.

“Recently, it has been confirmed that a North Korean soldier was in danger of being captured by the Ukrainian military, so he shouted for General Kim Jong Un and pulled out a grenade to try to blow himself up, but was killed,” said Lee Seong-kweun, a member of the intelligence committee of the South Korean parliament.

He claimed that North Korean leadership urged suicide and self-destruction before to arrest, as evidenced by memoranda carried by killed North Korean troops.

He refused to go into greater detail when asked about the specifics of the incidents he was referring to, stating that the National Intelligence Service (NIS) of South Korea had received information from Ukraine. On Tuesday, NIS did not respond to inquiries for comment.

According to Yang Uk, a defense expert at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies, soldiers’ or spies’ suicides are a means of protecting their families back home as well as demonstrating their allegiance to the Kim Jong Un dictatorship.

Zelenskiy of Ukraine stated on Sunday that if Kim Jong Un can arrange for the swap of captured North Korean troops for Ukrainians detained in Russia, Kyiv is prepared to turn over the soldiers to him.

However, according to Kim, the North Korean defector and former soldier, some North Korean soldiers would view being captured and sent to Pyongyang as a fate worse than death.

“Treason is the reason for becoming a prisoner of war. You are a traitor if you are captured. “In the military, we’re talking about leaving one last bullet,” he stated.