(SEOUL) — A former sergeant in the North Korean military says that few of Pyongyang’s soldiers have been captured fighting against Ukraine because they’re told their families will be executed if they are caught alive.
“Most soldiers will kill themselves before they’re killed by the enemy, it’s the biggest shame to be captured,” the former soldier, Ryu Seong-hyeon, told ABC News.
Ryu defected to South Korea in 2019, running across a minefield in the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas.
Pyongyang has deployed more than 12,000 soldiers to Russia to fight in the Ukraine war, according to US estimates, with experts claiming Russian forces have also used North Korean weapons.
An estimated 300 North Korean soldiers have died in the fighting, and over 2,700 have been wounded, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in a closed briefing last week.
Pyongyang has deployed more than 12,000 soldiers to Russia to fight in the Ukraine war, according to US estimates, with experts claiming Russian forces have also used North Korean weapons.
An estimated 300 North Korean soldiers have died in the fighting, and over 2,700 have been wounded, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in a closed briefing last week.
South Korea’s spy agency told journalists Thursday that an unknown number of additional North Korean soldiers have been sent to the frontlines in Russia’s western Kursk region since early February, after a near month-long lull in fighting against Ukrainian troops, who launched a surprise offensive across the border last August.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in January that his forces had captured two North Korean soldiers, marking the first time that Ukraine had captured Pyongyang’s troops alive.
In a nearly 3-minute video released by Ukraine following the capture of the two North Korean troops, one of the soldiers says he wants to remain in Ukraine when asked if he wishes to return home. The Korean translator asks, “Did you know you were fighting in a war against Ukraine?” The soldier shakes his head.
South Korean intelligence assessed that the two soldiers were with the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a key North Korean military intelligence agency.
“If the soldiers are captured and tell information to the enemy, their families will be punished, go to a political prison camp, or worse, they will be executed in front of the people,” said another North Korean defector, Pak Yusung.
‘They just die like a dog’
Pyongyang’s soldiers have struggled to adapt to the modern battlefield, the North Korean defectors suggested, as videos released by the Ukrainian military appear to show North Korean soldiers being chased down by attack drones.
Ryu and Pak defected long before the fighting that’s underway in Russia, but they said that, in their experience, most of the soldiers would not have seen a drone in their life.
“Before they go they don’t have any practice in how to defend against a drone or how to fight Ukrainians, that’s why they just die like a dog,” Ryu said. “They don’t have the skill, the language or the information.”
Pak and Ryu’s analysis lines up with information released by South Korean intelligence, which said North Korea has clearly instructed the soldiers to kill themselves to avoid being captured alive.
Seoul’s spy agency also said it attributes the “massive casualties” of North Korean soldiers to their “lack of understanding of modern warfare,” including their “useless” act of shooting at long-range drones, based on the agency’s analysis of a recent combat video.
Ryu, who was about 110 lbs. at the time of his defection, said if he were still a North Korean soldier, he would also want to go: “If I went to Ukraine, I could eat food, and I could see another country.” He said there are also big financial incentives, and the soldiers would have no idea that their chances of dying were so high.
Selling lies
Ryu and Pak said North Korean soldiers were being sold a lie. “From a young age they’re told to hate the American ‘wolves’, and now they are told they are finally killing Americans,” the defectors said.
Ryu said in his experience with the Korean air force, about 50% of the pilots were only trained in theory, and did not have experience flying a fighter jet.
Pak, who is a researcher at the North Korea Institute, said Kim would be receiving critical technology in exchange for the manpower, in what should be a deeply worrying sign for the world, Kim also gets more real combat experience in case of a war on the peninsula.
“If Russia wins the war, it will empower the dictator alliance,” Pak said.
“This is just the start. If the Ukraine war keeps going, Kim will keep sending soldiers. Inside North Korea more people will start knowing and that could be a threat to Kim.”
When asked what they could possibly do about it when living in a dictatorship controlled by fear, Pak said, “Think about it: your sons died on the battlefield and not for your own country.”
Ryu added, “You cannot send so many people to the labor camps.”
Pak and his team of four North Korean defectors, Voices of North Korean Youth, have been trying to push the international community to condemn Russia and North Korea with one voice, and also called for the International Criminal Court to hold Kim Jong Un accountable.
ABC News’ Karson Yiu contributed to this report.
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