About 1,000 North Koreans died fighting Ukraine near Kursk, officials say

Western officials have told the BBC that North Korean troops have already suffered almost 40% casualties in fighting in Russia’s western Kursk region in just three months.

Of the roughly 11,000 troops deployed from North Korea, known as the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), 4,000 were combat casualties, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

This term includes those killed, wounded, missing or captured. Of the 4,000, officials said about 1,000 had been killed by mid-January.

If these losses are confirmed, the North Koreans will be unbearable.

It is unclear where the injured are, and even when and in what capacity they will be replaced.

But the figures point to unusually high spending by an ally of President Vladimir Putin, such as Kim Jong Un, as he seeks to help him push Ukrainian troops out of Russia ahead of possible ceasefire talks later this year.

Last August, Ukraine launched a lightning strike on Russia’s Kursk region, catching Russian border guards by surprise.

The government in Kyiv at the time made it clear that it had no intention of holding onto the captured territory, but simply using it as a bargaining chip in future peace talks.

Ukraine’s early gains in Kursk have since been steadily eroded, in part due to the arrival of North Koreans in Russia in October.

But Ukraine still holds several hundred square kilometers of Russian territory and inflicts huge losses on the enemy.

The North Korean troops, reportedly from an “elite” unit called the Assault Corps, appear to have been thrown into battle with comparatively little training and protection.

“These are poorly trained troops under the command of Russian officers whom they do not understand,” says former British Army tank commander Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon.

“Honestly, they don’t stand a chance. They are thrown into a meat grinder with little chance of survival. They are cannon fodder, and Russian officers care even less about them than about their own people.”

Reports attributed to South Korean intelligence say the North Koreans are unprepared for the realities of modern warfare and appear particularly vulnerable to attack by Ukrainian first-person-view drones (FPVs), a weapon that has been a regular part of the battlespace further south in Ukraine’s Donbass region for many years.

Despite this, the commander-in-chief of Ukrainian forces, General Alexander Syrsky, warned earlier this week that North Korean soldiers pose a significant problem for Ukrainian fighters on the front line.

“There are many of them. Another 11-12 thousand highly motivated and well-trained soldiers who are conducting offensive operations. They operate according to Soviet tactics. They operate in platoons, companies. They rely on their numbers,” the general told Ukrainian TSN Tizhden. news program.