A group of North Korean defectors handed Ukrainian officials propaganda leaflets urging Pyongyang’s fighters to abandon the fight against Ukrainian troops in Russia, according to a new report.
The collection of former North Korean residents delivered the material, which includes written instructions and audio messages for North Korean fighters on how to defect, to Ukraine’s embassy in Seoul, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
Jang Se-yul, heading up the group, said Kyiv’s military “could secure mass surrender and defection among North Korean soldiers if proactive psychological warfare is mobilized,” according to the news agency.
U.S., South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence have said upwards of 10,000 North Korean troops were deployed in Russia’s Kursk region, where Moscow has struggled to fend off a surprise Ukrainian cross-border offensive since early August. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s defense minister, Rustem Umerov, said up to 15,000 troops could end up supporting Russian forces in Kursk.
Pyongyang and Moscow have drawn closer since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, providing significant munitions and missiles for the Kremlin’s war effort.
The two countries signed a mutual defense pact in June, and was ratified by Pyongyang on Tuesday, according to North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency. North Korea is thought to be receiving help from Russia with economic aid, as well as supplies like food and help with building up its weapons arsenal as it forges ahead with its nuclear development programs.
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There had been “small-scale clashes” so far between Ukrainian and North Korean troops, Umerov said in an interview with South Korean media published earlier this month, but that Ukraine could not yet verify how many casualties North Korea had sustained or how many soldiers had become prisoners of war.
An unnamed Ukrainian official told The New York Times on November 5 that the engagements involving North Korean troops were limited, probably intended to test Ukraine’s lines for weak points. Pyongyang’s troops joined Russia’s 810th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade, the official said.
A U.S. official told The Times a significant number of North Korean troops were killed, but did not specify further. Intelligence from Washington, Seoul and Kyiv has indicated the North Korean soldiers are dressed in Russian military uniforms.
“The first battles with North Korean soldiers open a new page of instability in the world,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week.
“North Korean troops are conditioned with unwavering loyalty to their leadership and a unique psychological resilience cultivated by the regime,” designed to fit a sense of “absolute sacrifice for the state” into Pyongyang’s personnel, Ji Hyun Park, a North Korean defector, now a senior fellow for human security at the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, previously told Newsweek.
“However, this psychological preparation may not translate effectively into practical resilience in the type of active combat scenarios currently seen in Ukraine, where they would face modernized and highly capable opposition in unfamiliar territory,” Park said.
North Korea may also face morale, desertion and defection problems if its troops start sustaining casualty figures approaching those Russian fighters are experiencing, Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies, recently told Newsweek.
A Ukrainian government-backed hotline, designed for Russian soldiers wishing to surrender as prisoners of war, published an appeal last month to North Korean soldiers urging them to “not die senselessly on foreign soil.” The message was published in Korean.
Ukrainian media reported in mid-October that 18 North Korean soldiers had already deserted close to the border with Ukraine, citing anonymous intelligence officials. This could not be independently verified.
