About twenty wounded North Korean soldiers were transferred at dusk last week to one of the main hospitals in the Russian city of Kursk. They were taken to a plant designated for them and guarded by the police. Only medical staff and translators were allowed inside.
“In the morning they told us to prepare for a special type of patient,” says a member of the hospital’s medical staff who treated the North Koreans. “We had heard rumors that there were North Koreans fighting there, but I didn’t believe it, no one had seen them before. Until they arrived, I thought it was a hoax,” he added. Most of the soldiers came with shrapnel wounds, he explains.
Another member of the medical staff says that, without translators, communication with the North Koreans was “impossible.” Some seemed “scared and nervous,” he adds.
Both doctors asked to speak without their names being published for fear of retaliation. The arrival of the patients at the hospital has created the possibility of rare interaction between the local population of the Kursk region and the North Korean soldiers, whose presence remains shrouded in secrecy.
According to US and South Korean authorities, up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to help Russia in the Ukraine war. For the most part, these forces have been deployed in the counteroffensive organized by Moscow to recapture swaths of Russian territory in the Kursk region, under Ukrainian control since last summer’s surprise incursion.
First casualties
Russia has not officially recognized the deployment of North Korean soldiers. Last week, President Vladimir Putin named several units active in the fighting in the Kursk region in his annual press conference, making a striking omission in the case of the North Koreans.
According to early indications, North Korean troops may be suffering heavy casualties. South Korean Army officials said Monday that More than 1,000 North Korean soldiers had diedor injured, since their deployment alongside Russian soldiers. A figure that, if confirmed, represents a terrible number of casualties for North Korean soldiers a few weeks after their arrival. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later said casualties exceeded 3,000.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff have also said that North Korea appears to be preparing to deploy more troops and equipment to Russia. Both Seoul and kyiv maintain that Moscow is doing everything possible to deny the presence of North Korean soldiers on the battlefield. Some information suggests that North Korean troops have received false uniforms and identity documents that make them appear as Yakuts or Buryats, two ethnic minorities from Siberia that have participated in the war from the beginning and have physical features similar to those of North Koreans.
Ukrainian Army special forces released images they said depicted three deceased North Korean soldiers with their documents. In the explicit photographs, the soldiers’ bloody and bruised bodies could be seen in three body bags. According to Ukrainian special forces, the Russian military documents they were carrying were fake, with invented Russian birthplaces and names.
His arrival goes unnoticed in Kursk
Although they have been deployed in the Kursk region since October, the arrival of the North Koreans has gone unnoticed in the city of the same name, its capital of half a million inhabitants. After interviewing a handful of neighbors, the general impression is that there is no sign of North Korean soldiers. Moscow may be exercising strict control over the movements of these foreign troops, confining them to remote military barracks, far from civilians.
Details about their exact location and living conditions remain unknown, but their presence has become fodder for conjecture in Internet chat rooms where locals wonder if anyone has actually seen North Koreans on the streets.
Some Kursk residents also dispute the idea that the Russians need the North Koreans to regain their territory. “I don’t think the North Koreans exist, our Army is strong enough without them,” he tells Guardian a resident of Kursk. Some of the wounded North Korean soldiers are apparently taken to hospitals on the outskirts of Moscow, avoiding smaller ones near the battlefield.
Last Wednesday, the Ukrainian security service published the details of a conversation that had intercepted between a Russian soldier and his wife, a nurse in a hospital near Moscow whose name was not released. In the recording, which has not been independently verified, the woman explains that about 200 wounded North Koreans had arrived for treatment. “These Koreans are elite or something like that, we have reserved some damn rooms just for them, what’s wrong, they are a privileged class?” the nurse is heard saying. “Well, they are ‘imported,’” the husband responds.
According to South Korea’s spy services, the majority of North Koreans in combat belong to the Storm Corps, an elite unit with “high morale” but without “knowledge about contemporary warfare.”
Save the last bullet
Military analysts have disputed from the beginning the convenience of deploying soldiers from an army with linguistic barriers and no experience of war since the 1950s in unknown terrain. According to testimonies from deserters published by the BBCNorth Korean soldiers are systematically underfed and malnourished, even within elite units like the Storm Corps.
The South Korean NGO Database Center for North Korean Human Rights (NKDB), which fights for respect for human rights in North Korea, stated This week that many of the North Korean soldiers whose images have been recorded appear to be young, raising questions about their military experience. South Korean MP Lee Seong-kweun believes that the high number of casualties among North Korean soldiers can be attributed to the “unfamiliar environment of the battlefield, where North Korean forces are being used for assault as expendable front-line units, and their lack of capability.” to neutralize drone attacks.”
Analysts believe that North Korean troops have been especially vulnerable to various types of drones Ukrainians, becoming one of the defining characteristics of modern warfare. Videos Released by Ukrainian forces they show drones flying in circles over North Korean soldiers trying to escape in a field in Kurshchina, in the Kursk region.
In a blurry clip circulating on Russian pro-war Telegram channels, a North Korean soldier talks to a Russian soldier about the experience of being chased by Ukrainian drones. “The drones didn’t stop coming,” the soldier can be heard shouting in Korean. “I shot three times with this,” he adds, holding up three fingers and pointing to his gun.
Although North Koreans have no say in whether or not to participate in the race, some defectors maintain that many do not lack motivation. “If the party wants you to go, you go,” said former North Korean soldier Ryu Seonghyun, who defected in 2019, during a round table recently organized by the NGO NKDB. But, Seonghyun added that many soldiers also see it as an opportunity to “change their luck” and experience life in a new country, far from the harsh conditions of their home.
South Korea said Friday that Ukraine has taken prisoner for the first time a North Korean soldier fighting for Russia. In the images circulating on the Internet you can see the soldier, emaciated and seriously injured, detained while he was in that dire state. Seoul later announced that the soldier has died from the injuries suffered.
Surrendering yourself alive was never considered an option in the North Korean military, some former Pyongyang soldiers say. “In the Army, you never understand that there is also the possibility of becoming a prisoner of war,” Seonghyun said, recalling a famous military song titled Save the last bullet in which soldiers are ordered to reserve the last projectile to end their own lives. “No matter what happens, you can’t be a prisoner,” he said.
Translation of Francisco de Zárate
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