There have been multiple reports about North Korean troops in Russia suffering casualties during engagements with Ukrainian troops. Some are arguing that the North Korean troops in Russia amount to cannon fodder and that the North Korean authorities do not want them to return alive.
“There’s a possibility that soldiers currently on deployment to Russia didn’t even know where they were headed until right before they left the country,” said a North Korean defector identified as Chung (a pseudonym) in a recent interview with Daily NK. Prior to his defection, Chung was a soldier who had been sent to Russia to work at a construction site.
“When North Korean soldiers are sent to work on construction sites in Russia, their overseas missions are referred to as ‘deployments,’ not ‘assignments’ inside the North Korean military. The soldiers themselves aren’t officially informed about their place of deployment until shortly before they depart,” Chung said.
Based on his personal experience, Chung said that soldiers deployed to the war zone may have been chosen by the military, without getting any say in the matter.
Chung said that even the soldiers given work assignments in Russia are not selected from an official pool of volunteers inside the army. Rather, the military leadership generally selects decorated soldiers with model records for those assignments.
Considering that, Chung said, there is a good chance that the soldiers currently being deployed to the combat zone (and the enlisted soldiers and NCOs in particular) are required to go whether they want to or not.
“All North Korean soldiers who are deployed overseas must pledge their willingness to lay down their lives in battle. They leave with the resolution to carry out the orders of their beloved comrade and supreme commander Kim Jong Un regardless of the situation or circumstances,” Chung said.
In other words, even soldiers who are being assigned to construction work in Russia must publicly pledge before leaving the country to follow the orders of the supreme leader even if that means losing their life on the battlefield.
The North Korean military demands this pledge of all soldiers going overseas to ensure they do not disobey orders or desert their post while overseas.
Defector expects soldiers in Ukraine to get “meager compensation”
Chung predicted that when North Korean soldiers are dispatched to war zones, the North Korean authorities will give them meager compensation, without paying monthly wages or special bonuses.
Even though soldiers on work assignments in Russia do grueling labor for 10 or more hours a day, Chung said, their work is regarded as a substitute for their military service. As such, they are only paid $100 a month, an extremely sparse living allowance.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told a closed-door meeting of the National Assembly’s National Intelligence Committee on Oct. 29 that North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine are receiving around $2,000 in monthly wages.
But Chung disputed that report. “It’s ridiculous to say that soldiers deployed to a war zone are receiving $2,000 each. There’s a huge difference between payments made to mercenaries from South Korea’s perspective and the actual payments made to people doing their military service in North Korea,” he pointed out.
According to Chung, even crack troops trained in the special forces are likely to become cannon fodder if they are actually sent to the battlefield.
“Even if we’re talking about elite special forces with the Storm Corps, all their training was done in mountainous areas, but the current fighting in Russia is taking place on wide-open plains. I doubt that even the North Korean government expects much combat proficiency from the soldiers it’s deploying to Russia,” he said.
“North Korea doesn’t want a single soldier coming back alive from the battlefield. The leadership will think that returning soldiers aren’t helpful for maintaining the regime since they may tell others the truth about what they experienced, which would stir up negativity about the regime,” Chung remarked.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asserted that a number of North Korean troops deployed to Russia had died in combat in Kursk in a press conference following the European Political Community summit he attended in Budapest, Hungary, on Nov. 7.
Zelenskyy said that unless appropriate measures are taken, he thinks even more North Korean troops will be sent to Russia.
Daily NK works with a network of sources in North Korea, China, and elsewhere. For security reasons, their identities remain anonymous.
Please send any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.
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