A North Korean soldier, who was fighting for Russia, has died in Ukrainian captivity due to severe wounds, according to South Korea’s spy agency.
The announcement by the National Intelligence Service in Seoul came on Friday, hours after the Yonhap news agency cited the agency as confirming for the first time that Ukrainian forces had captured a North Korean soldier.
The report said he was alive, though the location where he was seized was not known.
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce Russia’s military, in particular to the Kursk border region where Ukraine mounted a shock border incursion in August.
Confirmation of the soldier’s death came days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or wounded” so far as they joined Russian troops in combat.
It marked the first significant estimate by Ukraine of North Korean casualties several weeks after Kyiv announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war.
Ukraine’s military intelligence, known under its acronym GUR, said heavy casualties had been inflicted on North Korean units by Ukrainian strikes near Novoivanovka in Kursk, supply issues and even shortages of drinking water.
In remarks to reporters on Friday, White House spokesperson John Kirby said the United States also believes that North Korean forces are experiencing heavy casualties in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
He said 1,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in the last week alone in the Kursk region.
“It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses,” Kirby said, describing the North Korean troops’ offensive as “massed, dismounted assaults”.
Strengthened ties
North Korea and Russia have strengthened their military ties since Moscow invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
A landmark defence pact between Pyongyang and Moscow signed in June came into force this month, with Russian President Vladimir Putin hailing it as a “breakthrough document”.
Ukraine’s allies have called Pyongyang’s growing involvement in Russia’s war in Ukraine a “dangerous expansion” of the conflict.
South Korean politician Lee Seong-kweun said last week that Pyongyang’s soldiers were being “utilised as expendable front-line assault units”.
