North Korean defectors are ready to join Ukraine's fight against Putin

Nearly 200 North Korean refugees are poised to join Ukraine's fight against Russia as North Korean troops move closer to the battlefront in southern Russia, according to a new report.

“We are all military veterans who understand the military culture and psychological state of North Korea better than anyone,” said 69-year-old North Korean defector Ahn Chan-il South China Morning Postis in Asia this week in an article published on Monday.

According to the report, all members of the defector group have several years of military experience. Pyongyang has a compulsory military service that can last about a decade for men and has a huge army of well over a million men.

Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence agencies said in recent weeks that North Korea was sending between 10,000 and 12,000 troops to Russia to bolster Moscow's war efforts against Kiev.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that he had told South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol that 3,000 North Korean fighters were at “Russian training grounds in the immediate vicinity of the war zone.”

The Kiev military intelligence service GUR said on Thursday that it had discovered North Korean troops in the Russian border region of Kursk for the first time the day before.

Almost three months ago, Ukraine launched an invasion of the region that Russia initially had difficulty repelling. Moscow has not yet succeeded in shifting control of Kiev back to the border.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Monday that North Korean units had been deployed to Kursk. The Pentagon said separately that the roughly 10,000 North Korean soldiers training in eastern Russia “will likely reinforce Russian forces near Ukraine in the next few weeks.”

“Some of these soldiers have already moved closer to Ukraine,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a briefing on Monday. The US is “increasingly concerned” that it could be used against Ukraine in Kursk, Singh said.

Western and South Korean officials have widely condemned the move, calling the troop deployment to Russia a dangerous and worrying escalation of the war in Ukraine that began on February 24, 2022.

A Ukrainian government-backed hotline for Russian soldiers seeking to surrender as prisoners of war published an appeal last week for North Korean soldiers “not to die senselessly on foreign soil.”

Lee Min-bok, a fellow refugee, has reportedly asked Kiev for permission to help rescue North Korean soldiers. Seoul's intelligence service said this month that the North Korean soldiers had received Russian military uniforms, Russian-made weapons and fake documents claiming the fighters were residents of regions in Siberia.

“It appears that they disguised themselves as Russian soldiers to hide that they were stationed on the battlefield,” the agency said.

Footage published online by Russian and Ukrainian sources appeared to show North Korean soldiers at a Russian training site in the far eastern region of Primorye, which borders North Korean territory.

“We are prepared to go wherever necessary to work as psychological warfare agents – through loudspeaker broadcasts, distributing leaflets and even as interpreters,” Ahn said.

Relations on the Korean peninsula are at their worst level in decades, with Pyongyang officially abandoning the goal of reunification with the South and calling Seoul the “main enemy.”

Focal points of tension such as garbage-filled balloons gliding across the de facto border and loudspeakers blaring through the demilitarized zone have characterized tense relations in recent months.

Seoul is deeply concerned about Pyongyang's growing friendship with Moscow and whether Russia is helping North Korea develop its nuclear and conventional weapons programs in exchange for ammunition and missiles for Moscow's use against Ukraine.

North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui left for a visit to Russia on Monday, the country's state news agency KCNA reported.