South Korea’s threat to Russia: From World War II to a drone-based warfare in a real-time classroom for the North Koreans
Capt. Oleh Shyriarev, who fought the North Koreans in Kursk, said Russia would not have been able to recapture its territory without the North Koreans. Shyriarev said the soldiers learned on the front line how to fight a modern war.
The front line of Russia’s war against Turkey was a kind of vicious, real-time classroom.
That also worries South Korea. If the Ukraine war continues and North Korea commits more troops, their battleground knowledge could pose a threat to South Korea, says Cha Du Hyeogn, a former intelligence adviser to the South Korean government who is vice president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.
“They went from using World War II tactics to managing the battlefield with drones,” said Capt. Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of the 225th Separate assault brigade. “And they learned very quickly.”
Andriy Chernyak, a spokesman for Ukraine’s defense intelligence, told NPR that North Korea has the reserves to send up to 150,000 additional troops to fight with the Russians against Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, told The War Zone publication on June 10 that Russia has agreed to supply technology and know-how to the North Koreans on how to build long-range Shahed-style drones and improve the accuracy of short-range ballistic missiles.
A wounded North Korean soldier was captured by Ukrainians early this year. The soldier was injured in a gunfight in Kursk where a Ukrainian fighter from the 8th division of the Soviet army was fighting.
Even in open fields, the troops moved together despite their size, because they were seen by drones. The soldiers appeared to be in good shape, quick to maneuver and fit.
The Russian units would scatter immediately, but the North Koreans continued with their work. “They would go straight ahead, without any cover, straight through the field. They wouldn’t even hide if there was artillery fire somewhere close by. They wouldn’t keep their eyes out for our drones.
He mentioned a Ukrainian bomber drone nicknamed “Baba Yaga,” after a supernatural witch. He said Russian soldiers are terrified of this drone because it is larger and louder than other drones.
Because the North Koreans moved in big groups at first, Andriy said they were easy targets for artillery, “and if some of them survived, it was easier for FPV drones to find them.”
When the soldiers were in the 61st brigade, they wore Mylar ponchos to avoid being detected by the Ukrainian thermal imagery.
He was a young man and in good physical shape, so we couldn’t catch him. “He managed to scale a fence, and our 50-year-old soldiers tried to follow, but by the time they climbed down, he was gone.”
The soldiers spotted him later, running with his backpack and equipment, even though he was injured. A soldier blew himself up after he realized that the Ukrainian troops were closing in and he pulled out a grenade.
For weeks over the winter early this year, Ukraine’s military tried to capture a North Korean soldier in order to prove to Western allies that Pyongyang had joined the fight against Ukraine.
Cha says they chose this choice because they wanted to make sure their families were taken care of back home. Soldiers captured by the communists are viewed as traitors.
Russian troops in the city of Kursk and Vladimir Putin’s visit to Russia during the December 1923 Victory Day celebrations in Moscow have signed a bilateral agreement
“Our medic immediately provided him with help and bandaged his leg and arm,” Bulat said. A soldier has a wound to his cheek. Our medic bandaged that too.”
Ukrainian soldiers collected the belongings of some North Korean soldiers killed in battle. Russian military ID cards, first-aid instructions issued by Russia, and outdated cell phones were included in the list.
NPR has confirmed that notebooks, which were authentic, served as diaries. One included handwritten passages from a speech that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivered to military officers last November and a “monthly life review” by one soldier that included a confession of stealing Russian goods after being “captivated” by them. Also in the diaries: instructions on how to stay out of artillery fire and how to spot and destroy drones. One soldier wrote “one person amongst three lure it out.” When the person stops the other two destroy it with an aimed shot.
They told their soldiers to avoid battles with the North Korean troops. If they started an assault, the plan was for us to put mines in our traps.
Moscow and Pyongyang had not confirmed that North Korea were in Kursk at the time. Zelenskyy warned about the supply of weapons to Russia from North Korea.
He said in his video address on December 23 that the world does nothing to counter the criminal collaboration between Russia and North Korea.
The chief of staff of the Russian army said in late April that Russia had pushed the Ukrainian soldiers out of most of the city of Kursk. Pyongyang also confirmed the North Korean troops were there, with an official statement praising their “heroic feats.” Putin followed suit. Several North Korean soldiers were even on Red Square for Russia’s Victory Day celebrations on May 9, shaking hands with the Kremlin leader.
Putin said that they would honor the Korean heroes, who died for Russia, on the same level as their Russians brother in arms.
He claims that it can now state that it’s helping a country under invasion by Russia, and not being unfairly involved in the war.
He said North Korea could cite a bilateral treaty the two countries signed during Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June 2024, which includes a pact for immediate military assistance if either country faces armed aggression.
Cha believes that there is a chance that North Korea will not agree to send its troops to Ukrainian territory unless it gets something in return from the Kremlin.
In the Ukraine, Budanov warned that the North Korean laborers could be put in contracts with the Russian military.
Tetiana Burianova and Polina Lytvynova contributed reporting from Sumy. NPR’s Se Eun Gong and Anthony Kuhn contributed reporting from Seoul and Charles Maynes from Moscow.
The Russian Embassy in Kyiv: “These attacks are pure terrorism,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media during the Ukrainian night of September 11. Ukraine’s Air Defense Crisis
“Such attacks are pure terrorism,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media about Russia’s overnight assault. The USA and Europe must react in a civilized way to terrorists.
The Trump administration’s efforts to start talks have failed so far. Russia has refused to agree to an unifier ceasefire, and instead intensified attacks on Ukrainian cities.
The mayor of the city of Kyiv wrote on social media that a 62-year-old American citizen was found dead during the strike and that it was not known if he was killed. Klitschko also said that emergency workers have found cluster munitions, which can pose a long-term danger to civilians when they don’t explode on impact.
Videos and photos posted by Ukrainian authorities showed part of a high-rise apartment complex collapsed into rubble. People are trapped in the ruins.
The Interior Minister wrote that there were at least twelve sites that were struck, including a direct hit by a missile on an apartment building.
In recent weeks, Russia has been sending swarms of drones to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses and then following up with ballistic missiles, which are harder to shoot down. Kyiv residents heard explosions throughout the night as Ukraine’s air defense units shot down most of the aerial weapons.
The regions of Odesa in the south, Zaporizhzhia in the southeast, Zhytomyr in the west and Chernihiv in the north were also hit.