North Korean Soldiers "Blowing Themselves Up" To Avoid Capture: Ukraine (X image @AlexBarnicoat_)
Reportedly, Ukraine has discovered a dozen of dead bodies belonging to North Korea. The Ukrainian special force were doing an intense search through the snowy western terrain of Kursk region, after an intense battle with Russia last week. As per the report, the Ukrainian force found one North Korean soldier alive, who detonated his own grenade, blowing himself up avoiding capture.
Describing the intense fighting in the Kursk region, the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces said in an X post.
Watch how Ukraine’s SOF repel North Korean troops assault in russia’s Kursk region.
The special forces eliminated 17 DPRK soldiers. One North Korean soldier had set an unsuccessful trap for the rangers of the 6th Regiment and blew himself up with a grenade. pic.twitter.com/nObBOMnusI
— SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES OF UKRAINE (@SOF_UKR) January 13, 2025
The North Korean soldiers escaped the blast uninjured, but the suicide incident added to 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, said Kyiv officials, as reported by media.
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Apparently, North Korean soldiers are “brainwashed” to kill themselves rather than being captured as war criminals. “Self-detonation and suicides: that’s the reality about North Korea”, Kim, a 32-year-old former North Korean soldier who defected to the South in 2022, told Reuters.
Referring to the reclusive North Korean leader, he said, “These soldiers who left home for a fight there have been brainwashed and are truly ready to sacrifice themselves for Kim Jong Un”.
Kim had reportedly 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. According to him, for some North Korean soldiers, being captured and sent back to Pyongyang would be seen as a fate worse than death.
“Becoming a prisoner of war means treason. Being captured means you are a traitor. Leave one last bullet, that’s what we are talking about in the military”, he said.
Lee Seong-kweun, who sits on the South Korean parliament’s intelligence committee, also confirmed the theory of ‘brainwashed North Korean troops’. He said that recently, memos were recovered from dead North Korean soldiers showing that authorities at home have emphasized self-destruction and suicide before capture, said media report.
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“Recently, it has been confirmed that a North Korean soldier was in danger of being captured by the Ukrainian military, so he shouted for General Kim Jong Un and pulled out a grenade to try to blow himself up, but was killed,” Lee told Reuters.
Reportedly, 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, said Ukraine.
Both Russia and Ukraine 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.
Earlier this week, Ukraine released videos of what it said were two captured North Korean soldiers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that one of the soldiers expressed a desire to stay in Ukraine, and the other to return to North Korea. He also added that Kyiv is ready to exchange those soldiers with Kim Jong Un if he agrees to push for the freedom of Ukrainian Prisoners of War in Russia.
