Russia-Ukraine war: For weeks, Ukrainian troops have been fighting against an unfamiliar enemy —North Korean soldiers sent to bolster Russia’s forces on the battlefield.
More worryingly, North Korean soldiers have posed new challenges for Ukraine by blowing themselves up before getting captured.
According to a social media post by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, after a battle in Russia’s Kursk region this week, Ukrainian forces found the bodies of more than a dozen slain North Korean soldiers.
Among them, one NK soldier was still alive and as the Ukrainian forces approached, he detonated a grenade, blowing himself up, said the post.
According to the Ukraine forces, some North Korean soldiers are resorting to extreme measures as they support Russia’s three-year war against Ukraine.
North Korea’s suicide soldiers
“Self-detonation and suicides: that’s the reality about North Korea,” Reuters quoted a former North Korean soldier, who defected to the South in 2022, as saying.
“These soldiers who left home for a fight there have been brainwashed and are truly ready to sacrifice themselves for Kim Jong Un,” he added.
South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun, citing the country’s spy agency, on Monday said that the number of North Korean soldiers killed and injured on the battlefield suggests they are unprepared for modern warfare, such as drone attacks, and may be being used as “cannon fodder” by Russia.
There are signs these troops have been instructed to commit suicide, 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,” Lee, who sits on the South Korean parliament’s intelligence committee, said, adding memos carried by slain NK soldiers also show that North Korean authorities emphasised self-destruction and suicide before capture.
North Korea has sent around 11,000 soldiers to support Russian forces in the western Kursk region, which Ukraine seized in a surprise incursion last year. More than 3,000 have been killed or injured, according to Kyiv.
However, Moscow and Pyongyang had dismissed reports about the North’s troop deployment as “fake news”.
