“ONE LAST BULLET”
North Korea’s deployment to Russia is its first major involvement in a war since the 1950-53 Korean War. North Korea reportedly sent a much smaller contingent to the Vietnam War and to the civil conflict in Syria.
The United States has warned the experience in Russia will make North Korea “more capable of waging war against its neighbours”.
North Korea’s leader Kim has previously hailed his army as “the strongest in the world”, according to state media. Propaganda videos released by the regime in 2023 showed bare-chested soldiers running across snowy fields, jumping into frozen lakes and punching blocks of ice for winter training.
But a South Korean lawmaker briefed by the country’s spy agency on Monday said that the numbers of North Korean soldiers wounded and killed on the battlefield suggests they are unprepared for modern warfare, such as drone attacks, and may be being used as “cannon fodder” by Russia.
More worryingly there are signs these troops have been instructed to commit suicide, he said.
“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 Seong-kweun, who sits on the South Korean parliament’s intelligence committee, said.
Memos carried by slain North Korean soldiers also show that North Korean authorities emphasised self-destruction and suicide before capture, he added.
Source: CNA
