Conflicts - TensionsNortheast Asia

‘Expendable’ North Korean troops ordered on futile missions in Russia’s illegal war

FORUM Staff

North Korea’s ill-prepared troops, deployed to support Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine, are suffering significant casualties, including about 1,000 deaths and injuries during one week in late December 2024.

The mass casualty estimates, provided by the United States National Security Advisor’s office and the U.S. Department of Defense, appear to confirm analysts’ predictions that North Korean troops would be “cannon fodder” during fighting in Russia’s Kursk region. The North Korean soldiers are being sent against heavily fortified positions without proper planning, coordination or equipment.

Video released by Ukrainian Special Operations Forces shows North Korean troops attempting to advance on foot, rather than in armored vehicles, with no support from tanks or artillery. They dispersed in panic as attack drones approached.

“These human wave tactics that we’re seeing haven’t really been all that effective,” U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in late December. “It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses.”

The North Korean troops are part of the Storm Corps, special forces considered among the regime’s best trained and most heavily indoctrinated, but they are still unprepared for drone attacks and unfamiliar with the terrain, The New York Times newspaper reported. They have no combat experience and many appear to be malnourished.

Pyongyang’s troops also face supply issues and shortages of drinking water, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, The Associated Press reported.

The U.S. also has received reports of North Korean soldiers committing suicide to avoid capture by Ukrainian forces, “likely out of fear of reprisal against their families in North Korea,” Kirby said.

Ukrainian Special Operations Forces also released excerpts translated from a diary they said was retrieved from a dead North Korean soldier that contained simplistic instructions on how to avoid front-line drones and artillery. Dodging a drone required using a comrade as bait while other soldiers fired on the uncrewed aerial vehicle. To escape artillery, troops were told to disperse into small groups and flee or hide in a shell crater.

About 11,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been waging a counteroffensive since August 2024, with the first contingent arriving in October. Russian leader Vladimir Putin ordered the illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Pyongyang has also shipped more than 13,000 containers of artillery rounds, anti-tank rockets, howitzers and rocket launchers to Russia.

Allies and Partners including Japan, South Korea and the U.S. have condemned the North Korean deployment as a major escalation.

“It remains deeply troubling that Putin has decided to use foreign troops on Russian soil to defend that soil, which is a historic move that hasn’t been done for decades,” Kirby said.

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