After a battle in Russia’s snowy region of Kursk this week, Ukrainian forces scoured the bodies of more than a dozen dead North Korean enemy soldiers.
Among them, they found one still alive. But as they approached, he detonated a grenade, blowing himself up, according to a description by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces on Monday.
The forces said their soldiers escaped the blast uninjured.
It is among mounting evidence from the battlefield, intelligence reports and testimonies of defectors that some North Korean soldiers are resorting to extreme measures as they support Russia’s three-year war with Ukraine.
“Self-detonation and suicides: that’s the reality about North Korea,” said Kim, a 32-year-old former North Korean soldier who defected to the South in 2022, requesting he only be identified by his surname due to fears of reprisals against his family left in the North.
“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, referring to the reclusive North Korean leader.
Kim, introduced to Reuters by Seoul-based human rights group NK Imprisonment Victims’ Family Association, said he had worked for North Korea‘s military in Russia for about seven years up until 2021 on construction projects to earn foreign currency for the regime.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say Pyongyang has deployed some 11,000 soldiers to support Moscow’s forces in Russia’s western Kursk region, which Ukraine seized in a surprise incursion last year. More than 3,000 have been killed or injured, according to Kyiv.
North Korea‘s mission to the United Nations in Geneva did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moscow and Pyongyang initially dismissed reports about the North‘s troop deployment as “fake news”. But Russian president Vladimir Putin in October did not deny that North Korean soldiers were currently in Russia and a North Korean official said any such deployment would be lawful.
Ukraine this week released videos of what it said were two captured North Korean soldiers. One of the soldiers expressed a desire to stay in Ukraine, and the other to return to North Korea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
North Korea‘s deployment to Russia is its first major involvement in a war since the 1950-53 Korean War. North Korea reportedly sent a much smaller contingent to the Vietnam War and to the civil conflict in Syria.
The United States has warned the experience in Russia will make North Korea “more capable of waging war against its neighbours”.
North Korea‘s leader Kim has previously hailed his army as “the strongest in the world”, according to state media. Propaganda videos released by the regime in 2023 showed bare-chested soldiers running across snowy fields, jumping into frozen lakes and punching blocks of ice for winter training.
