Ukraine: N. Korea sent up to 15k soldiers of whom 600 died, says S. Korea

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: About 600 North Korean soldiers, who fought for Russia in its ongoing war against Ukraine, have been killed so far, according to South Korean lawmakers.

Addressing the media after a closed-door briefing by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) on Wednesday, Lee Seong-kweun and Kim Byung-kee said that an estimated 4,700 North Koreans had been killed or injured so far in the war.

The two lawmakers, who co-chair their parliament’s intelligence committee, made these comments two days after North Korea confirmed, for the first time, that it had sent troops to Russia to support Moscow’s war in Ukraine, started on February 24, 2022.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Monday, quoting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said he had ordered the deployment of troops to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces.”

These casualty figures mark a significant jump from the NIS’s January briefing to lawmakers, when the spy agency reportedly said that about 300 North Korean troops had been killed in the conflict.

Lee and Kim, members of the conservative People Power Party and Liberal Democratic Party, respectively, said that the NIS estimates that Pyongyang has deployed about 15,000 soldiers in the battlefield.

Pyongyang might have received technical assistance on spy satellites in return for its assistance, as well as drones, electronic warfare equipment and SA-22 surface-to-air missiles.

“After six months of participation in the war, the North Korean military has become less inept, and its combat capability has significantly improved as it becomes accustomed to using new weapons, including drones,” Lee said.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked North Korean troops for their role in fighting the Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region and, for the first time, confirmed North Korean troop deployments in Ukraine.

In a statement on April 28, Putin hailed the North Korean soldiers for their “heroism and dedication.”.

Russia on April 26 claimed it had retaken the Kursk region from Ukraine last year, while Kiev denied it.

According to the intelligence officials from South Korea, the United States and Ukraine, North Korea dispatched 10,000-12,000 troops to Russia last autumn. This was neither confirmed nor denied by the regime until now.

Putin praised North Korean troops for fighting “shoulder to shoulder with Russian fighters” and thanked them for “defending our Motherland as their own”.

His statement came after North Korea revealed the deployment of its troops on April 28, marking the country’s first major armed conflict role since the Korean War (1950-53).

According to North Korea’s Central Military Commission, Pyongyang decided to send its troops to Russia after its leader Kim Jong Un and President Putin signed a defense treaty in June 2024.

The deal is considered Russia and North Korea’s “biggest” since the Cold War and entails both to “use all available means to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked.”

Kim announced that a monument will soon be raised in Pyongyang to mark North Korean soldiers’ battle feats and that flowers will be laid before the tombstones of the soldiers who sacrificed their lives. He said the government must take steps to preferentially treat and take care of the families of the soldiers who took part in the war.

However, he didn’t say how many troops North Korea eventually sent and how many of them had died. But in March, South Korea’s military said that around 4,000 North Korean soldiers had been killed or wounded in the Russia-Ukraine war fronts. The South Korean military also assessed at the time that North Korea sent about 3,000 additional troops to Russia earlier this year.

In the beginning, North Korean soldiers, according to reports, became easy targets for drone and artillery attacks on the Russian-Ukraine battlefields because of their lack of combat experience and unfamiliarity with the terrain. Still, Ukrainian military and intelligence officials admitted the North Koreans gained crucial battlefield experience and were key to Russia’s strategy of overwhelming Ukraine by throwing large numbers of soldiers into the battle for Kursk.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry on Monday urged North Korea to withdraw its troops from Russia immediately, saying the North’s support of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine posed a grave provocation to international security. Its spokesperson Koo Byoungsam also called the North’s troops’ deployment “an act against humanity” that has sacrificed young North Korean soldiers.

In a Kremlin meeting on Saturday ast week, Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff for Russia’s Armed Forces, informed President Putin of Russia’s regaining of the Kursk region, and acknowledged that North Korean soldiers fought alongside Russia to repel Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region and “demonstrated high professionalism, showed fortitude, courage and heroism in battle.”

Ukraine’s General Staff countered that its defensive operation in certain areas in Kursk was continuing.