Troops Detained in Ukraine Give Rare Glimpse Into North Korea’s Military
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Ukraine’s president released a video of the two soldiers being interrogated, revealing they knew little about the war they were sent to fight in.
One young soldier from North Korea said he didn’t know where he was fighting when he was sent from his isolated homeland to the frontline of the war between Russia and Ukraine. When asked whether his parents knew where he was, another North Korean soldier shook his head.
The three-minute video clip that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine posted on the social media platform X on Sunday showed a Ukrainian official questioning two North Korean prisoners of war with the help of a Korean interpreter. The Ukrainian authorities announced their capture on Saturday, saying they were the first North Korean troops to be taken alive. Mr. Zelensky later offered to exchange them for Ukrainian prisoners of war held in Russia.
The soldiers’ answers came in footage provided and edited by Ukraine, which controlled the production and release of the video. It offered a tiny, but rare, glimpse into the mind-set and preparedness of an estimated 11,000 North Korean troops deployed to help Russia’s war against Ukraine.
They appeared to back up what South Korean and U.S. officials have said in recent weeks: North Korean troops were taking heavy casualties in a foreign war waged in an unfamiliar territory while their government was keeping their deployment a secret to its people.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in Seoul on Monday that it estimates 300 North Korean soldiers have been killed and 2,700 others wounded in battles against Ukraine. The White House has put the toll even higher.
Memos found with dead North Korean soldiers indicated that their government had urged the highly indoctrinated troops to end their own lives rather than be captured in the battlefield, according to South Korean lawmakers who briefed journalists after a closed-door meeting with the spy agency, echoing an assertion made by Mr. Zelensky. One North Korean soldier was trying to blow himself up with a grenade, shouting the name of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, when he was shot by Ukrainian troops, they said.
