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.
North Korea has not responded to reports of its troops captured or killed by Ukraine forces. It has never publicized the deployment or large shipments of North Korean artillery shells and other weapons sent to Russia to help its war against Ukraine, although they marked the country’s first intervention in a major armed conflict overseas in decades.
In the video released by Mr. Zelensky, the voice of an official questioning the North Koreans was distorted, perhaps to prevent their identification, and the captured troops were clearly still wounded. Ukraine said the soldiers had received medical care and had been taken to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, for interrogation. But by posting the video clip online, Ukraine also appeared to use the POWs in its messaging to the West.
The Ukrainian leader has seized the involvement of North Korean troops for Russia as a way to try and galvanize more support from allies. South Korea, too, has cited North Korea’s growing military alliance with Russia as a source for international concern.
Experts say that comments from prisoners of war should be assessed in light of the power imbalance between captors and captives, with the knowledge that the prisoners may not be speaking freely and could be motivated by their own safety concerns or a desire for good treatment.
According to the rules governing treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, governments are supposed to protect a prisoner of war from being made into a “public curiosity,” a concept that is sometimes interpreted as not presenting them in any public setting.
Lying in a bed with both his hands wrapped in white bandages, one of the two North Korean POWs looked bewildered when he indicated — by nodding or shaking his head — that he didn’t know he was fighting Ukraine when he was captured or that he was now in Ukraine.
When he was sent to the front line on Jan. 3, he said he was only told that the North Korean troops “would train as if we were in real combat.”
“I saw my colleagues dying next to me,” he said. “I was hiding in a dugout when I got injured.”
When asked whether he wanted to return home, the soldier asked if the Ukrainians were good people. When the interpreter said yes, he said in a weak but pleading voice: “I want to live here.”
The other North Korean soldier had a bandage wrapped around his wounded jaw and did not speak. He nodded when he was asked whether he had parents in North Korea. But he shook his head when he was asked whether they knew where he was.
“The video clip of the two soldiers shows that Kim Jong-un has not been able to find a way to justify his country’s participation in the Russia-Ukraine war to his people,” said Kang Dong-wan, an expert on North Korea at Dong-A University in South Korea. “It also showed that the North Korean troops are being wasted as cannon fodder.”
The two soldiers belonged to the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the North Korean military’s intelligence arm, the South Korean lawmakers told journalists in a briefing. The lawmakers said that when the soldiers were sent to the war, their government had promised to treat them as “heroes.”
The soldiers were captured in the Kursk region of western Russia, where North Korean forces were fighting to help Russia regain territory seized by Ukraine during a surprise cross-border incursion last summer.
The North Korean troops were shooting at drones flying in the distance in futile attempts to destroy them, the South Korean intelligence agency told lawmakers, citing battlefield footage that it analyzed. They were also making reckless charges at their enemies without proper artillery support from the rear, it was quoted as saying.
Mr. Kim is believed to reap billions of dollars worth of oil, food and weapon technologies in return for its supply of troops and weapons to Russia, according to South Korean analysts and officials. But the troop deployment was so rushed that the North Korean soldiers were poorly prepared for modern warfare, especially drone attacks, they said.
On Sunday, Mr. Zelensky said that Ukraine was “ready to hand over Kim Jong-un’s soldiers to him if he can organize their exchange for our warriors who are being held captive in Russia.”
“For those North Korean soldiers who do not wish to return, there may be other options available. In particular, those who express a desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korean will be given that opportunity,” he added.
Professor Kang said that by exposing the face of one North Korean soldier and his wish to remain in Ukraine, the Ukrainian authorities were endangering his safety should he be sent back to North Korea, where his statement would be seen as an act of betrayal.
If any North Korean POWs wanted to defect to South Korea, the Seoul government was ready to negotiate with Kyiv, the South Korean lawmakers quoted the intelligence agency as saying.
