North Korean despot Kim Jong-un has sent tens of thousands of soldiers to the frontlines in Ukraine – but the ill-prepared troops are falling in their thousands against Ukrainian tactics
North Korean soldiers appear to be throwing Russian pensioners out of their homes
Kim Jong-un has deployed a “zombie” army to the battlefield in Ukraine as North Korean soldiers reportedly hurl themselves into Ukrainian defences in “futile” waves.
The premier of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) sent 11,000 men to back Vladimir Putin’s two-year invasion, with the first soldiers filtering into Ukraine late last year. But in those few short months, western officials believe nearly a tenth of the fighting force has been wiped out following heavy battling in the Kursk region.
Some 4,000 of the supposedly elite fighters have also been pulled from the front after suffering injuries, with others withdrawn for “retraining” purposes. Those who remain are “robots” who throw themselves onto the battlefield, trudge through minefields and take their own lives to avoid capture.
As well as walking through minefields seemingly without regards for their own lives, North Korean troopers also reportedly remove vital armour to make themselves more manoeuvrable. Ukrainian soldiers claim to have seen them dispensing with their helmets and body armour chest plates to reduce their weight.
Doing so, soldiers believe, allows them to run at enemy positions unimpeded. Grim shots taken from the frontlines show rows of North Korean soldiers lying dead in deep snow after being taken down by Ukrainian drones. Other footage has shown the desperate lengths the “zombie” troops will go to avoid capture.
One video shows the moment a North Korean troop is shaken conscious by a Ukrainian trooper triggering a grenade below his chin and yelling what South Korean media later revealed was “General Kim Jong Un!” Their distressing conduct on the frozen battlefields of Ukraine has earned them a reputation as “biological robots”, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence Directorate, has said.
Troops from the DPRK have won some praise from Ukrainian officials, however, with one commander of the 6th Special Operations Forces regiment telling CNN the soldiers are “young, trained, hardy fighters”. A second battalion serviceman told the broadcaster they are highly trained marksmen who can shoot down drones with high efficiency.
But they are ultimately left at a significant disadvantage by coming from the backwards Korean state, which is anchored several decades in the past. The commander said they likely would never have encountered the drones – which Ukraine has mounted with grenades to attack Russian troops – in combat. He said: “They are prepared for the realities of war in 1980 at best.”
