Ukrainian soldiers fighting North Koreans: ‘They shoot well, they move well, but they are used as cannon fodder’

In December 2024, the men of the 1st Battalion of the 8th Ukrainian Special Forces Regiment received an order unlike any other: they were to capture soldiers sent by North Korea to fight the Ukrainian army in Russia. The goal was to refute Kremlin propaganda denying North Korean involvement in the war. Not only did the 8th Regiment obtain evidence of the presence of Kim Jong-Un’s troops, they also obtained key information about the operational level of the North Korean dictatorship’s fighters in just over a month.

EL PAÍS met in early February in the province of Sumy with soldiers from three Ukrainian brigades who have faced North Korean soldiers in Kursk. This Russian region bordering Ukraine has been partially occupied by Kyiv’s forces since August 2024. Based on the mutual defense agreement signed that year by Kim and Vladimir Putin, Pyongyang has deployed more than 11,000 soldiers in Kursk since October, in addition to the nearly 60,000 Russian troops assigned to liberate the region, according to data from the intelligence services of NATO members and Ukraine.

Ukrainian officers interviewed confirm the information provided by several military units in recent days: for three weeks there had been no sign of North Koreans on the front line. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, however, said on February 7 that Kim’s troops had returned to the battlefield. On February 8, the 47th Mechanized Brigade published images of combat that would confirm the information provided by the president.

Zelenskiy said in January that the North Korean forces had suffered 4,000 casualties in just three months of fighting. Ukrainian Defense Ministry intelligence services believe there are still 8,000 North Korean soldiers deployed in Russia and that they will receive further training to improve their performance.

The Ukrainian soldiers interviewed agree that the North Koreans they faced are highly trained soldiers, far superior to regular Russian infantry, and are therefore probably elite troops. Volodymyr, a member of the 8th Special Forces Regiment, gives an illustrative example: according to Western standards for evacuating the wounded, four soldiers must coordinate to remove fallen comrades from the battlefield. “The North Koreans, on the other hand, only send one of their men to remove a wounded man. He carries him on his shoulders and that’s it.” His colleagues add that the equipment North Koreans carry and fight with is much heavier than that of the Russian infantry, which is typical of Russian elite soldiers.

“They are trained soldiers; they have a level that requires at least half a year of training to reach,” says Andrii, the given name of a company commander in the 61st Mechanized Brigade. He adds that the average age of the North Koreans is much lower than that of the Russian army and the Ukrainian army, the oldest in the world in terms of the average age of its soldiers. Andrii says that the oldest North Korean they have identified was 25. The average age of troops in the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2024 was 43.

“They shoot well, they move well, they are competent fighters, but they are used as cannon fodder,” says Andrii. The other Ukrainian soldiers interviewed reached the same conclusion. The tactical pattern of the Asian enemy is always the same, as confirmed by the interviewees from the special forces, the 61st Mechanized Brigade, and the 95th Air Assault Brigade: in assault groups of no fewer than 100 soldiers, the North Koreans attack a sector of positions head-on, without retreating or changing direction, not even when they are being punished by artillery. And the worst thing, according to the Ukrainian officers, is that they hardly have any armored vehicles or support from Russian artillery. “It is classic Soviet military theory: to advance at all costs. But it is suicide. They are more ideologically motivated but they are not prepared for this war, they do not understand it technologically, and their tactics are not those of a modern war,” says Volodymyr Nebir, spokesman for the 95th Brigade.

Russian tactics have evolved into a more conservative system than North Korea's. "The Russians go for a specific position supported by their artillery, trying to capture it with small squadrons and from several points, and then they secure it," explains Nebir. "The Russians retreat or change areas if they are under fire; the North Koreans, on the other hand, advance no matter what, to the last man."

Andrii, the company commander in the 61st Brigade, emphasizes the detachment from life that they have observed in North Koreans and confirms that they have seen the bodies of suicide bombers, killed with their own grenades to avoid being captured, or young men who refused to surrender and were eventually shot down. The diaries of dead fighters recovered on the battlefield show “pure fanatics of the North Korean regime,” says Vladislav. Their level of motivation is much higher because they follow ideals that drive them to sacrifice. In a diary obtained by the special forces, a North Korean soldier writes that he wants to shed his blood for his homeland to atone for mistakes he made in the past.

The unit of the 8th Special Forces Regiment that spoke to this newspaper showed some of these documents, as well as military IDs that provide the North Korean soldiers with false identities as Russian citizens. Nebir adds that it has been confirmed some of the passports correspond to real people.

Communication problems

Among the North Koreans’ belongings were diagrams drawn in pen or small hand-drawn maps of the sector in which they were fighting. The contrast with Ukrainian troops is stark, as they operate with numerous digital devices. The unit from the 8th Regiment also displays a walkie-talkie taken from the enemy: it is the only communication device that an entire platoon of 20 men had. “During a fight we could hear a company commander shouting orders to his men, while a Russian next to him gave him basic instructions in Russian.”

The Ukrainian military also points to communication problems between the Russians and North Koreans as a decisive factor in their withdrawal from the front. Lieutenant Andrii’s thesis is that the Pyongyang troops’ tactics are so rudimentary so as to avoid the complexity of the chain of command between the Russian leadership and the North Koreans, with interpreters constantly translating orders.

The question remains as to what training and support the North Koreans have received from the Russians. The Kremlin’s artillery has not protected them from attacks, they do not use armored vehicles, and in the first weeks of their deployment they did not even hide from Ukrainian drones. Volodymyr adds that they also perceived little adaptation to the particularities of the terrain. The Ukrainian soldier emphasizes that the North Korean troops were learning as the days went by. “If they receive better training, especially from their comrades who already have combat experience, they can be more dangerous opponents.”

“I remember when 2,000 North Koreans suddenly appeared in our sector, it was horrible,” Andrii explains in a deep voice, still feeling the fear of that moment. His company assumed they would suffer a few days of retreats and many casualties, but something unexpected happened: “There was one day when 700 of them attacked us, head on, just like that, shouting and shooting, with hardly any supporting fire. At least 30% died.”

Andrii sees parallels to his time on the Bakhmut and Soledar fronts in 2023, when Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group were being mowed down in suicide raids. Now it is worse in Kursk, he says, because there may be even more North Koreans and fewer Ukrainians than two years ago: while back then his men spent a week in positions and then rotated, now they spend more than a month in the trenches because there are no reinforcements to relieve them.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition