Kim Jong Un’s ZOMBIE army: Even Ukrainians admit they’re crack shots who show no fear. But as North Korean troops sacrifice themselves as bait for drones, march into minefields and scream their leader’s name, no wonder thousands are already dead or maimed

There is a grim joke doing the rounds on the Ukrainian front lines. ‘Koreans like to eat dogs. Now the dogs are eating the Koreans.’

Battlefield canine scavengers have reportedly added the bloodied corpses of Kim Jong Un’s North Korean footsoldiers to their regular diet of dead Russians.

True or not, it is a reflection of the disastrous performance of Kim’s 11,000 or so supposedly elite forces since they arrived to bolster Russian forces in the Kursk area last October.

Up to now, they have suffered around 4,000 casualties, including 1,000 fatalities. Inadequately trained and led by Russian officers whose language they don’t understand and who care even less for their allies’ lives than they do for those of their own men, they have been easy prey for the Ukrainians’ guns and drones.

Reports this week that some units are being temporarily withdrawn from one sector of the Kursk front for ‘retraining’ should come as no surprise.

For their suicidal ineptitude and apparent willingness to die has shocked even Ukrainian soldiers, well used to the meat-grinder tactics employed by the Russians who think nothing of hurling wave after wave of men into futile attacks, confident that in the end, sheer weight of numbers will prevail.

This latest element in this saga of slaughter is another reminder of what is at stake in a conflict, the scale and savagery of which no one could have predicted even five years ago.

On the one hand is a Russia whose leaders disdain notions of progress and who have fought with an appalling disregard for life that would have gladdened Joseph Stalin’s black heart.

On the other is a proud new nation – for sure not without its faults and problems – but fighting doggedly on against the odds to secure a future based on values of freedom and decency.

Even after nearly three years of war, the story of the North Koreans still has the power to shock. The deployment of around 11,000 men, allegedly the cream of the Democratic People’s Republic Of Korea [DPRK] army was a present from Kim to Putin to cement the warm new relationship between the two pariah states.

However the Kremlin was at pains to keep their arrival secret, probably fearing it would be seen as a sign to the world that they were running out of cannon

fodder. The DPRK troops were issued with fake Russian military IDs showing they came from republics in the far east of the country, which would explain their ethnic appearance.

The newcomers were supposed to help Moscow drive Ukrainian forces out of the territory they captured inside Russia’s Kursk region in a surprise cross-border offensive six months ago.

But they soon came up against the terrifying lethality of 21st century warfare à la Ukraine and in particular the challenge posed by perhaps the biggest threat on the battlefield – the ubiquitous drones in all their deadly forms.

A chilling video taken from a surveillance drone issued by the Ukrainian military shows the stark reality.

It was recorded not in Kursk but on the Ukrainian border north east of Kharkiv where some North Koreans were apparently sent to reinforce Russian units suffering manpower shortages.

A dazed and helpless young Korean soldier crouches in a ditch. He looks up fearfully as he registers the presence of a grenade-carrying First-Person-View [FPV] drone.

He tries to cock his rifle then gives up and flattens himself on the ground. Next he is obliterated in a cloud of smoke and flame.

The victim was one of a ten-man squad, led by a Russian and accompanied by a translator. ‘After the fight, which lasted about two hours, we saw four bodies lying face down on the ground,’ said a Ukrainian officer who uses the call sign ‘Kruzak’. The attackers withdrew, leaving their wounded behind – common practice in the Russian way of war – including the soldier in the video.

‘He was hit with shrapnel and they left him,’ said Kruzak. ‘I think he was around 18 or 20 years old. Our drone flew over, to keep an eye on him. We didn’t see any radio equipment on him, he probably lost it… he gave out a cry, probably ‘help me’, but nobody was around. It looks like he was trying to reload his rifle, but it was jammed. Maybe he wanted to kill himself, or maybe he wanted to try to hit the drone flying near him.

‘I saw a lot of situations before when Russians made the same decision – suicide is a popular choice on the front when somebody on their side has a serious injury. Some refuse to give up, but most of them just try to die as quickly as possible. Then, one of our FPV drones made the last shot and killed him.’ This gruesome episode is consistent with many other reports suggesting the North Koreans were ill-prepared for the hell they were stepping into. North Korea has an estimated 1.2 million citizens in uniform and national service is mandatory from the age of 17. But its troops have not been in battle since the Korean War which ended in 1953 and tactics are hopelessly out of date.

The military has clearly taken little account of the advent of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles [UAVs], the big new game-changer in modern warfare. Their way of dealing with them was revealed in handwritten instructions found by Ukrainian intelligence on a dead Korean and shared with Western media. They were labelled ‘how to destroy drones’ and suggested using one of their own soldiers as bait.

‘When a drone is spotted… at a distance of about 10-12 metres, one out of three people should unconditionally lure it, and the other two should take aim and shoot,’ it read.

It also proposed that troops should seek cover in shell holes ‘since shells will not fall again in the same crater’ – apparently oblivious to the fact that UAVs can spot any human or vehicle that is not under cover.

Orders found on other corpses make it clear that troops were expected to die rather than surrender. In one video in circulation, a Ukrainian soldier approaches a wounded North Korean face down on the ground, and tugs his leg to check if he is alive. The wounded man screams something in Korean, then explodes a hand grenade under his chin.

After analysing the video, South Korean intelligence reported that the soldier’s last words were ‘General Kim Jong Un!’

Papers found on the dead suggest that Pyongyang’s mass brainwashing techniques have done a thorough job. One document reads: ‘The hammer of death to the unknown and the puppet trash is not far off. We wield the powerful force that makes them tremble in fear.’

There are numerous declarations of loyalty to the Supreme Leader with one soldier writing that he would ‘carry out the supreme commander’s orders without hesitation’. Another vows: ‘I will demonstrate unparalleled bravery to its fullest. World, watch closely.’ Genuine sentiments or an insurance policy to protect families back home? We will never know.

But there is no doubting their fighting spirit and disregard of danger. So far only three North Koreans have been captured. All were wounded and one has subsequently died.

There have been accounts of infantrymen plodding nervelessly through Ukrainian minefields. In the judgment of Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence Directorate, ‘they are like biological robots’. Ukrainian soldiers have also reported cases of North Koreans removing their helmets and the heavy ceramic chest plates from their body armour in order to reduce weight and allow them to run at enemy positions.

Some Ukrainians have expressed grudging admiration for the Koreans’ fanatical discipline and warned that they should not be underestimated.

‘They are extremely resilient, extremely well-trained, and morally stable,’ said Yuriy Bondar of the Galician Lions brigade, one of the first units to engage with them in the Kursk region, writing on Facebook. One thing they have learned in training is how to shoot. ‘Their level of small arms proficiency is extremely high,’ he said. ‘The number of drones that the enemy managed to shoot down just using small arms is seriously surprising.’

But according to ‘Kruzak’, they ‘don’t look like heroes. They look like a group of crazy guys who don’t have any experience on how to operate in war or how to move on the front line’.

The sight of the zombie-like arrivals from Kim’s Hermit Kingdom marching to their deaths has at times moved him to something like pity.

‘I feel sad about these people,’ he said. ‘Their life has been filled with propaganda. They live their life in jail. All information about the rest of the world is blocked on their internet and social media.’

Unconfirmed reports suggest North Korean troops have availed themselves of the unfettered access to the internet offered in Ukraine, and turned eagerly to pornography websites.

Whatever the case, they are hardly in an enviable position.

‘They don’t really know the situation, or anything about what’s happening in Ukraine, said ‘Kruzak’. ‘In any case, they don’t have any real choice. If Kim Jong Un sends them to join the Russian army, then they don’t have much say in the matter. But in the end, we have to kill them. They have come here to try and kill us. They’re not on a friendly visit.’

Putin has tried to present Russia’s warm relationship with North Korea, celebrated in his lavish state visit to Pyongyang last summer, as part of an ambitious project to forge a new global axis involving North Korea, Iran and China that will create a new world order and weaken the West.

But his love-in with Kim looks more like a sign of weakness and desperation. Moscow relies on the millions of artillery shells it receives from North Korea to maintain the tempo of its offensive in eastern Ukraine. Pyongyang has also sent dozens of KN-23 short-range ballistic missiles as well as heavy guns, and more are on their way along with support units.

In return, the DPRK receives hard currency and illegal oil shipments which the regime desperately needs to stay afloat.

It is a grubby arrangement of necessity that signals Putin is running out of options as he carries his country into a fourth year of pointless conflict.

For Kim Jong Un the deal has many attractions. His gift of troops gives an opportunity for them to experience 21st century battle – no matter what the cost may be in lives. And the cash and energy flow from Moscow provides life support that will make him less vulnerable to pressure from the United States to force him to abandon his cherished nuclear weapons programme.

South Korean intelligence sources claimed recently that Pyongyang was planning to send even more troops to Russia and reports from the US say that they could be on the battlefield within as little as two months.

It seems that there will be plenty of pickings for the dogs of No Man’s Land before winter is out.

Additional reporting: Boldizsar Gyori.

-Patrick Bishop presents the weekly Battleground Ukraine podcast with Saul David.