An anonymous North Korean military source claimed to the specialized outlet Daily NK on Thursday that the communist regime had adopted a policy of “strict secrecy” surrounding soldiers allegedly dying on the front lines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
North Korea, a close ally of Russia’s, has not confirmed formally any involvement in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Reports began surfacing in late October, however, that Pyongyang had sent as many as 10,000 troops to Russia to train and fight in Ukraine. Both the governments of South Korea and the United States claim to have corroborated Ukrainian reports of North Koreans on the front lines.
The reports surfaced after Russian strongman Vladimir Putin visited Pyongyang this summer, his first stop in the city in two decades. As part of the visit, he and communist dictator Kim Jong-un signed a mutual defense treaty that outside observers feared could commit North Korea to fight against Ukraine.
Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, colonizing its Crimean peninsula. The Russian leader escalated his assault in 2022 after almost a decade of proxy fighting between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian military in the eastern Donbass region, launching a “special operation” to oust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. As part of that “operation,” Putin “annexed” four more regions of Ukraine: the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Luhansk and border regions Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Daily NK identified its source as belonging to the “Korean People’s Army’s 11th Corps.” The source claimed to confirm that the communist regime had established “internal protocols” to hide deaths in the Ukrainian war and added that those protocols are already in place for deaths even within North Korea as malnourished young men routinely die during training.
“Even when troops perish during training, they are interred on a hill close to their base or cremated, with their families merely informed of their death in the line of duty,” the source was quoted as saying. “Similarly, troops dispatched to Russia are treated the same way.”
“If a soldier sustains injuries in an accident that render them unfit for combat, they are sent back to North Korea instead of receiving medical care in Russia,” the anonymous person added.
Daily NK reported that the average North Korean has no information on any involvement by his or her country in Russia or Ukraine, as state media does not report it. Government-controlled propaganda outlets are the only form of media legal to consume in the country; consuming outside media, including pop music and movies, can often lead to extreme punishments including death.
Despite the lack of official information, the outlet indicated that word has begun to spread within North Korea’s borders, forcing communist officials to come up with plans for “quelling rumors and related activities to eradicate any potential threats to the system.”
Rumors of North Korea’s participation in the Russian invasion, fueled often by high-ranking Western leaders, have circulated for over a month. In late October, Pentagon leaders said they could confirm that as many as 10,000 North Korean soldiers had arrived in Russia for training, presumably to fight the Ukrainian armed forces. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte also appeared to confirm the deployment, calling it a “dangerous expansion of Russia’s war.”
The Ukrainian government said in early October that it had opened fire for the first time on North Korean troops.
“The first DPRK soldiers have already come under fire in the Kursk region,” Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, declared.
Zelensky himself said Ukraine could confirm the presence of North Korean soldiers in a video in early November in which he condemned Western powers for not increasing their support to the Ukrainian war effort in the face of that development.
“Instead of providing the much-needed long-range capabilities, America is watching, Britain is watching, Germany is watching,” Zelensky complained on Friday. “Everyone is just waiting for the North Korean military to start targeting Ukrainians.”
The government of South Korea has also encouraged countries supporting Ukraine to take the North Korean threat seriously. On November 13, the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) revealed it had evidence that the North Koreans were fighting in Kursk, an undisputed Russian territory that Ukraine counter-invaded in August. More recently, on Thursday, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun told his nation’s parliament that Russia is likely using North Koreans as “cannon fodder” to keep the war effort afloat.
“It should be noted that the war is led by Russia, and from the stance of units heads of the Russian military, they are likely to send the North Korean platoons to the most dangerous and difficult areas,” Kim said.
North Korea has not addressed the reports in any meaningful way. Asked directly if Kim Jong-un deployed troops to Russia, North Korean United Nations envoy Kim Song replied on Thursday, “The treaty on comprehensive strategic partnership between the DPRK and Russian Federation fully conforms to international law and the U.N. Charter.”
The “comprehensive stategic partnership” Kim referred to is the mutual defense treaty Kim Jong-un and Putin signed in June.
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