North Korean troops pulled from Ukraine war front line after mass casualties
North Korean troops fighting for Russia have been pulled from the front line for extra training after crude tactics led to massive casualties.
North Korea entered the war in November when Kim Jong-un sent an estimated 11,000 troops to help Russia push Ukrainian troops out of the Kursk region, sparking fears of a major escalation.
But Ukrainian special forces units fighting in Kursk say they have not seen any North Koreans for around three weeks.
American officials separately told the New York Times that North Koreans had not been seen at the front for a fortnight, attributing the withdrawal to heavy casualties.
The officials said the troops may return after receiving reinforcements and additional training.
Ukrainians who have fought the North Koreans have described them as committed fighters who often choose suicide over surrender, but who are hampered by unfamiliar terrain, outdated equipment and poor tactics.
A diary recovered from the body of a North Korean soldier in December revealed that infantry had been ordered to act as live “drone bait” so that Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could be shot down.
A wounded North Korean soldier who Ukraine alleges to have captured in Kursk – Handout/AFP
Ukraine took the first two North Korean prisoners of war after repelling an assault on Jan 11.
One of the pair, who were wounded, risked his life by refusing to drop his sausage at gunpoint, according to the Ukrainian paratroopers who captured him.
Those reports have led some to mock the North Koreans as an ineffective force.
But some Ukrainian soldiers have warned against underestimating them.
“The Koreans have impeccable marksmanship training, which is crucial given their style of warfare. The statistics on the small drones they have destroyed attest to this fact,” Volodymyr Demchenko, a Ukrainian soldier, wrote on X last month.
The human drone bait tactic should “tell you something about their moral resilience in the face of what I believe is the most terrifying anti-personnel weapon available today,” he added.
Neither Pyongyang nor Moscow have officially acknowledged sending North Korean troops into combat.
Russia has used North Koreans as ‘drone bait,’ though neither Moscow nor Pyongyang have acknowledged their presence in combat zones – Vladimir Smirnov/AFP
Estimates of North Korean losses vary. Western officials said about 11,000 North Koreans are believed to have been deployed to fight for Russia, of whom about 1,000 have been killed.
Last month the Centre for Defence Strategies, a Ukrainian think tank, cited South Korean intelligence estimates putting North Korean losses at more than 300 killed and 2,700 wounded, around 25-30 per cent of the original contingent.
On Saturday, a Russian missile killed at least five people when it hit a block of flats in the city of Poltava, in Ukraine.
An attack on Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa, a Unesco World Heritage site, injured seven and badly damaged historic buildings, including a hotel used by journalists.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack was “a deliberate strike” and that Norwegian diplomats had been among those “who were in the epicentre of the strike”.
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