By Ju-min Park and John Geddie
SEOUL (Reuters) – After a battle in Russia’s snowy western Kursk region this week, Ukrainian special forces searched the bodies of more than a dozen slain North Korean enemy soldiers.
Among them they found one still alive. But as they approached, he detonated a grenade and blew himself up, according to a description of the fighting posted on social media by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces on Monday.
The forces said their soldiers escaped the explosion unharmed. Reuters was unable to verify the incident.
But amid mounting battlefield evidence, intelligence reports and testimonies from defectors is that some North Korean soldiers are resorting to extreme measures while supporting Russia’s three-year war with Ukraine.
“Self-detonations and suicides: that is the reality of North Korea,” said Kim, a 32-year-old former North Korean soldier who defected to the South in 2022, and asked to be identified only by his last name for fear of reprisals against his family when he went to the North. .
“These soldiers who left their homes to fight there are brainwashed and are really willing to sacrifice themselves for Kim Jong Un,” he added, referring to the reclusive North Korean leader.
Kim, introduced to Reuters by the Seoul-based human rights group NK Prisonment Victims’ Family Association, said he had worked for 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 say Pyongyang has deployed about 11,000 troops to support Moscow’s forces in Russia’s western Kursk region, which Ukraine seized in a surprise raid last year. According to Kyiv, more than 3,000 people have been 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 in October Russian President Vladimir Putin did not deny that North Korean soldiers were currently in Russia, and a North Korean official said any such deployment would be legal.
Ukraine this week released videos of what it said were two captured North Korean soldiers. One of the soldiers expressed his desire to remain in Ukraine and the other to return to North Korea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
“ONE LAST BULLET”
North Korea’s deployment to Russia is its first major involvement in a war since the 1950-53 Korean War. North Korea reportedly sent a much smaller contingent to the Vietnam War and the civil conflict in Syria.
The United States has warned that the experience in Russia will make North Korea “more capable of waging war against its neighbors.”
North Korea’s leader Kim has previously hailed his military as “the strongest in the world”, according to state media. 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 number of North Korean soldiers wounded and killed on the battlefield suggests they are not prepared for modern warfare, such as drone strikes, and may be being used as “cannon fodder”. for Russia.
The most worrying thing is that there are signs that these troops have been instructed to commit suicide, he said.
“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 died,” Lee Seong -kweun, member of the intelligence committee of South Korea’s parliament, he said.
Memoranda carried by slain North Korean soldiers also show that North Korean authorities emphasized self-destruction and suicide before capture, he added.
When asked about more details of the cases he was referring to, he refused to elaborate, saying it was information from Ukraine shared with South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS). NIS did not respond to calls seeking comment on Tuesday.
Suicides committed by soldiers or spies not only show loyalty to Kim Jong Un’s regime, but are also a way to protect families left at home, said Yang Uk, a defense analyst at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
Ukraine’s Zelenskiy said Sunday that kyiv is ready to hand over captured North Korean soldiers to its leader Kim Jong Un if he can facilitate their exchange for Ukrainians held captive in Russia.
However, for some North Korean soldiers, being captured and sent back to Pyongyang would be seen as a fate worse than death, said Kim, the defector and former North Korean soldier.
“Becoming a prisoner of war means treason. Being captured means you’re a traitor. Drop one last bullet, that’s what we’re talking about in the military,” he said.