Mick Hartley

A North Korean defector talks to the Daily NK about the grim reality of life for NK soldiers sent to Russia – and his belief that Pyongyang "doesn’t want a single soldier coming back alive from the battlefield":

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….

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.