South Korea’s intelligence agency has reported that a North Korean soldier believed to have been the first to be captured while supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine has died after being taken alive by Ukrainian forces.
Seoul’s spy agency earlier on Friday confirmed Ukrainian reports that an injured North Korean soldier had been captured by Ukrainian forces, in what was likely to have been the first capture of its kind since Pyongyang sent combat forces to bolster Russian forces in the war.
The South Korean national intelligence service said in a statement: “Through real-time information sharing with an allied country’s intelligence agency, it has been confirmed that one injured North Korean soldier has been captured.”
The agency later said the captured soldier had died from his injuries.
A photo of the soldier, who looked gaunt and appeared to have been injured, circulated on the Telegram messaging app, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said.
In his nightly video address on Friday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said North Korean troops fighting in Russia’s Kursk region are suffering heavy losses and being left unprotected by Moscow’s forces.
Ukraine’s president said Russian troops were doing everything to ensure that North Korean soldiers were not taken prisoner by Kyiv. He said some North Korean soldiers had been captured by Ukrainian forces, but were hurt so badly they could not be saved.
Earlier the Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi reported that special forces had captured the soldier in the Kursk region, where Ukraine has seized and held some territory. The outlet did not say when the capture took place, and there has been no confirmation from officials in Ukraine or North Korea, where the state media have not referred to the deployment of the country’s troops.
Militarnyi said that if it was confirmed, the soldier would be the first North Korean combatant to have been taken by Ukrainian forces.
As many as 11,000 soldiers from North Korea have been deployed to help Russia, months after Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defence pact that committed each country to come to the other’s aid if attacked.
While the North could gain valuable battlefield experience, its poorly trained soldiers, fighting in unfamiliar territory, have quickly been exposed to the dangers of combat.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, known as the GUR, said on Thursday that North Korean troops were suffering heavy losses in the fighting in Kursk and facing logistical difficulties as a result of Ukrainian attacks.
The GUR said Ukrainian strikes near Novoivanovka had inflicted heavy casualties on North Korean units and that North Korean troops also faced supply issues, including shortages of drinking water.
This week Zelenskyy claimed that more than 3,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in the Kursk region. It was the first significant estimate by Ukraine of North Korean casualties.
On Friday a White House spokesperson said 1,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded in Kursk in the past week alone. “It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defences,” John Kirby said.
He described the North Korean troops’ offensive as “massed, dismounted assaults” and said Joe Biden was likely to approve another security assistance package for Ukraine in coming days.
The deployment of North Korean soldiers marked a dramatic escalation in the war, which began almost three years ago, as the Kremlin turned to its ally to boost its forces. It was also seen as an attempt by Putin to broaden the conflict through the direct involvement in fighting of a third country.
