TAIPEI, Taiwan – North Korean soldiers are being “consumed” in attacks in Russia’s Kursk region because they lack experience of drone warfare, South Korea’s spy agency said, adding that Russian forces complained that the North Koreans were a “burden” because of their “ignorance.”
The U.S. and Ukraine estimate there are between 10,000 and 12,000 North Korean troops in Russia, with their focus on Kursk, parts of which Ukrainian forces occupied in August, where they are actively engaged in fighting and are taking casualties.
“North Korean troops are being ‘consumed’ for front-line assaults in an unfamiliar battlefield environment of open fields, and they lack the ability to respond to drone attacks,” said South Korea’s the National Intelligence Service, or NIS, as cited by South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun who was briefed by the agency on Thursday.
Russian troops were complaining about the North Koreans’ ignorance of drones, calling them a “burden,” the agency added, without elaborating.
“Some 11,000 North Korean troops, believed to be deployed in the Kursk region, began to engage in actual combat from December. At least 100 people have been killed, and the number of injured is expected to reach 1,000,” said the NIS.
South Korea’s confirmation of North Korean casualties came after Ukraine released a video saying that it showed about 50 North Korean soldiers were killed in attacks by Ukrainian drones in Kursk this week.
Sgt. Mykhailo Makaruk, a member of the Ukrainian unit who confirmed to RFA Korean that he had fought against North Koreans in the battle shown on the video, said nearly 200 North Korean soldiers came to the Ukrainian position, and shortly after, the drones began to attack.
“They came and they came and the drones are bombing them,” he said. “I don’t understand how they can come to this war. They look like, you know, real zombies.”
Separately, on Tuesday, Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, or DIU, said North Korean forces were taking additional measures to mitigate the threat of drone strikes.
“After serious losses, North Korean units began setting up additional observation posts to detect drones,” the DIU wrote in a post to its official Telegram channel.
Andrii Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, posted on his Telegram account that North Korean soldiers were no match for the drones, also called unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.
“The dead DPRK soldiers did not have a visual understanding of the danger from UAVs before the drone strikes, which may indicate that the Russians poorly informed the Koreans about the use of drones at the front,” Kovalenko said, using North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Kovalenko added that the Russian soldiers were seen trying to quickly recover the bodies of North Korean soldiers killed on the front lines, which was different from the way they treated Russian dead.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces were burning the faces of dead North Korean soldiers to conceal their identities and keep secret their deployment to help Russia, citing a video as evidence.
Earlier, he said that Russia had begun using North Koreans in significant numbers for the first time to assault Ukrainian positions and his forces released images and videos of what it said were the bodies of North Koreans soldiers, among some 200 killed and wounded in Kursk.
‘Normal cooperation’
North Korea once again declined to deny or confirm that it had sent troops to Russia to help it with its war against Ukraine but its foreign ministry called its cooperation with Russia “normal.”
Responding to a joint statement from the European Union, South Korea and the U.S. criticizing North Korea’s deployment to Russia, the North’s ministry of foreign affairs said it “distorted and slandered” the essence of a normal partnership between two nations.
“[The joint statement] is a grave threat to international peace and security that goes beyond political provocation that violently infringes on the sovereignty of sovereign states,” said the ministry on Thursday, calling its partnership with Russia a “legitimate” way to counter external threats, including the U.S.
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Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has confirmed that North Korean soldiers are aiding Russia in its war against Ukraine, which began with Putin’s invasion in February 2022. However, emerging reports suggest that such collaboration is developing rapidly, with mounting evidence pointing to North Korea’s increasing involvement.
Ukraine’s Security Service said on Tuesday it had intercepted a phone call between a nurse at a hospital near Moscow and her husband, a soldier on the front lines.
According to the nurse, more than 200 wounded North Korean servicemen were brought to the hospital near Moscow over two days.
In the recording, the nurse asked, “Are they elite, these Koreans?” and mentioned that certain wards were being cleared for them. Radio Free Asia has not been able to independently verify the recording.
The deployment of the North Koreans comes after more than two years of deepening ties with Russia. North Korea has sent large volumes of arms and ammunition to Russia, including missiles and artillery shells, to support its war.
This week, the U.S., European Union, and South Korea imposed sanctions on individuals and entities accused of facilitating North Korea’s military assistance to Russia.
Edited by RFA Staff.