Following an intense battle with Russian forces this week, Ukrainian special forces searching for bodies in the snowy western reaches of the Kursk region found the corpses of more than a dozen North Korean enemy soldiers. Among them, they found that one soldier was still alive.
But as Ukrainian troops approached him, the lone North Korean detonated his grenade to avoid capture, Ukrainian special operations forces described intense fighting in the occupied Kursk region in a post on Hui said.
Watch how Ukraine’s SOF foiled an attack by North Korean troops in Russia’s Kursk region.
Special forces killed 17 DPRK soldiers. A North Korean soldier unsuccessfully laid a trap for Rangers of the 6th Regiment and blew himself up with a grenade. pic.twitter.com/nObBOMnusI
– Special Operations Forces of Ukraine (@SOF_UKR) 13 January 2025
According to Kiev officials, their troops escaped unharmed from the blast, but the suicide incident added to growing evidence from the battlefield, intelligence reports and testimony from defectors that some North Korean troops are resorting to extreme measures as they seek to confront Ukraine. Support Russia’s Three Years’ War. ,
‘Soldiers are being brainwashed’
The incident is the latest documentation of the lengths North Korean soldiers are willing to go to avoid capture and become prisoners of war, which could be presented as evidence of Pyongyang and Moscow’s coercive military alliance. “Brainwashed” soldiers from the Hermit Kingdom, who are being treated as treason for being captured, are posing a new challenge to Ukraine, officials said.
“Self-detonations and suicides: This is the reality about North Korea,” Kim, a 32-year-old former North Korean soldier who defected to the South in 2022, told Reuters.
“These soldiers who left home to fight have been brainwashed and they are actually willing to sacrifice themselves for Kim Jong Un,” he said, referring to the reclusive North Korean leader.
Kim reportedly worked for North Korea’s military in Russia for about seven years until 2021 on construction projects to earn foreign currency for the regime. According to him, capturing some North Korean soldiers and sending them back to Pyongyang would be seen as a fate worse than death.
He said, “Becoming a prisoner of war means treason. Being captured means you are a traitor. Leave one last shot, that’s what we talk about in the Army.”
Kim’s claims were confirmed by Lee Seong-kwan, a member of the intelligence committee of the South Korean parliament. He said memos recovered from recently deceased North Korean soldiers show that domestic authorities have emphasized self-destruction and suicide before capture.
“It was recently 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 took out a grenade to try to blow himself up, but was hit,” Lee said. Went.” Reuters.
Ukraine accuses North Korea
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 incursion last year. According to Kiev, more than 3,000 people have been killed or injured.
Moscow and Pyongyang initially dismissed reports about the North’s troop deployment as “fake news.” But in October Russian President Vladimir Putin denied that North Korean troops were currently in Russia and a North Korean official said any such deployment would be legal.
Ukraine released video this week saying they were two captured North Korean soldiers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that one soldier expressed a desire to remain in Ukraine and the other to return to North Korea.
Communication continues between captured North Korean soldiers and Ukrainian investigators. We are establishing the facts. We are verifying all the details. The world will know the whole truth about how Russia is exploiting people who have grown up in a complete information vacuum… pic.twitter.com/CWcssQjr94
– Volodymyr Zelensky / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) 14 January 2025
Zelensky said Kiev is ready to replace those troops with Kim Jong Un if he agrees to push for the freedom of Ukrainian POWs in Russia.
The Ukrainian President has even claimed that capable Russian and North Korean troops attack front lines to eliminate wounded Pyongyang soldiers to avoid Pyongyang’s capture.
They also shared photos online showing two men sitting on a cot, the younger with both his hands bandaged and the elder with a bandage on his head due to a jaw injury.
North Korea’s deployment to Russia is its first major involvement in a war since the 1950-53 Korean War. North Korea reportedly sent very small contingents to the Vietnam War and civil conflict in Syria. North Korean leader Kim had previously described his military as “the strongest in the world”.
