[New Year special] One year since North Korea dispatched troops to the Russia·Ukraine war

② Nobody wants to die

The deployment of North Korean troops to the Russia·Ukraine war began in the latter half of 2024. In January last year came word that North Korean soldiers had been captured as prisoners of war. They were captured in Kursk, Russia. It was Russian territory that Ukraine had strategically seized. This was the first time since the Korean War that there were POWs of North Korean origin. The two prisoners appeared in foreign and domestic media at the time, but their whereabouts over the past year have not been made public.

The process of meeting the North Korean POWs was complicated. The Ukrainian government was reluctant to disclose them. It is said that when Ukrainian President Zelensky personally revealed their faces last year, the South Korean government lodged a strong protest.

Permission to report on the North Korean POWs was granted, and we headed to the facility where they are held last October. Detained there are not only North Korean soldiers but also prisoners of war such as Russian volunteer fighters from Russia and other countries. On the day of the interview, early in the morning, the facility manager and an intelligence officer escorted our team. We went down underground, passed through maze-like corridors, and came to a small room.

The North Korean POW we finally met was Ri Mo (26). Unlike Russian prisoners in blue uniforms, he appeared wearing a black padded jacket. He was quite wary upon seeing the reporting team. When we greeted him, Mr. Ri narrowed his eyes and said, “The authorities are clever. Do you think I would be easily moved if you send a woman?” We explained, “We are not government officials,” and after thinking for a moment he said, “If you have a cigarette, give me one.” He repeatedly asked for the reporters’ names and addresses.

That is how the interview began. Mr. Ri was shot in the jaw when he was captured. He had been shown to the media last year with bandages on his face. However, the Ukrainian government has still not disclosed his name. A year on, the wound had largely healed and the swelling had gone down. Unlike a year ago when he communicated in writing, he now spoke without difficulty.

“I just feel uncomfortable. Being alive.” When asked ‘How do you feel about becoming a prisoner of war?’, his expression twisted. He said, “Becoming a POW is the same as being a traitor. It is like betraying the country. When I became a POW, I felt I had no value in living. Others blew themselves up rather than be captured, but I…could not do it.”

His practical fear is repatriation to North Korea. He said, “I often jerk awake at night because of that worry,” and “If I return to North Korea, my family, relatives, and friendsthree generationswill be exterminated.”

A year has passed, but the memories of the war still torment him. “I witnessed such a bloody, brutal battle for the first time,” he said. “When you look at the fallen, there are no intact bodies. The whole body is torn and severed,” adding, “If someone is killed by a sniper, that is a relatively clean death.”

He saw, right in front of him, a comrade killed by a strike from a self-destruct drone. “So many comrades-in-arms were lost in that Russian land (Kursk). What will they do with all those remains….” He could not finish his sentence. Asked ‘What went through your mind watching your comrades die?’, he said, “I felt fear, and I also felt they were so pitiable and wretched.”

Regarding how he came to fight, he said, “When we boarded the ship, Russians were waiting, so we knew we were going to Russia,” and “In Vladivostok we trained for urban warfare and on Russian weapons and equipment, then around early December (2024) we moved to Kursk.”

The battle took place at dawn. He was shot and wounded. The bullet broke his arm bone and passed through his jaw. He lost consciousness while bleeding, and when he came to, it was night. His body trembled violently. Enduring severe blood loss and the cold, he tried to make his way back to his unit empty-handed but was encircled by Ukrainian forces en route. He tried to harm himself but had no knife or grenade.

Asked ‘Were you afraid the moment you became a POW?’, he said, “I did not feel fear; I felt it was unfair.” When asked what he meant by unfair, he said, “I was resentful about becoming a POW,” adding, “If I had even had a grenade, I could have avoided capture and died…” Then he asked in return, “Will not the regret of not dying then come back a hundredfold for the rest of my life?” According to Ukraine’s 96th Brigade, Mr. Ri attempted suicide during transfer, trying to dash into a concrete pillar and smash his head.

Mr. Ri had planned to study vocal music after discharge. North Korean soldiers are required to serve ten years, and in his discharge year he was sent to Russia. While in custody he would sometimes sing, and Ukrainian guards were reportedly astonished by his skill. During the interview he sang ‘Mother Is My Favorite’, a famous song in North Korea.

‘Even when fully grown, I seek my mother/Even with white hair, I seek my mother/Without mother I cannot live/My mother is the one I love the most.’

A year ago he publicly expressed, through the media, that he wanted to go to outh Korea. But there has been no concrete movement yet. He said, “I am firmly inclined to go to South Korea,” and “(But) I keep wondering whether I can go to South Korea or not. My heart is earnest.”

Another POW is Mr. Baek, 24. With a boyish face like a middle-schooler, he moves on crutches with metal pins in his leg from when he was captured. He said he was “from the Reconnaissance General Bureau.” The Reconnaissance General Bureau is a core intelligence agency under the direct command of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, responsible for operations against South Korea and overseas, including assassinations and terror attacks on key figures.

He became a POW in January 2025 during a battle to seize a city, when he was surrounded by a Ukrainian mechanized unit. “There were so many drones that day,” he recalled. “We were fighting desperately when a drone flew in, and I ran into a warehouse to take cover, but another drone came in through a small window inside the warehouse.” He said, “I dropped flat, but because the space was tight, my leg ended up getting injured like this.”

About four out of ten men were injured by the drone blast, and they decided that all would self-detonate, each taking a grenade. Lying alone in the forest, Mr. Baek thought the others had all perished and decided he too should die, so he took out his grenade. But suddenly he thought, ‘If our forces counterattack, might they be able to find me then?’, and chose to hold out in the woods. Three or four days later, foreign troopshe could not tell whether Ukrainian or Russianapproached in the distance, and he warned, “If you come closer, I will set this off.” He said, “Since I had a grenade, I was not afraid; I could die at any time just by pulling the pin,” adding, “If they were Russian, I could join them, and if they were the enemy, I would pull the pin and diethat was the only thought I had.” The unidentified foreign troops reassured him, saying, “We are Russian soldiers,” and offered to stop the bleeding, taking out a tourniquet that was the same as the one he carried. “I became sure they were Russian soldiers, and I gave the password, and that checked out,” Mr. Baek said, explaining how he came to trust and follow them.

He realized something was wrong in the ambulance. Its interior decorations had the Stars and Stripes, and the wall of the vehicle said Ukraine. He said, “I searched for the grenade, but the Ukrainians had already taken it away,” adding, “When they put the cuffs back on and blindfolded me, that was the most desolate moment. Because I could not even die…”

Asked ‘Why did you think of dying?’, he said, “If you become a POW, is that not a wretched way to live?” adding, “I cannot live miserably as a POW.” Asked ‘What is the most wretched about it?’, he replied, “How can a Choson soldier live as the enemy’s prisoner?”

He enlisted following his parents’ words: ‘A man becomes a real person only after serving and suffering in the army.’ “When you head to the Military Mobilization and Manpower Department, the sight of your parents is their last face,” he said. “Parents all wait at the bus stop to see you pass by one last time, and my mother cried.” Mr. Baek said, “Reaching out through the bus window and holding hands, the sight of my mother in tearsthat was the last time.”

He said he could not tell his parents he was being deployed to Russia. He himself did not even know he was heading to a battlefield. “I thought, since we had come to Russia and there was a war with Ukraine, the military might join the fighting,” he said. But the battlefield he entered was not like training. “It was my first time seeing actual warcorpses strewn about, someone who had been standing right in front of me a moment ago lying deadthis kind of world was a first for me,” he said, lowering his head.

Going into battle unprepared increased the toll. “We had trained hard, and at first I was excited to finally put it to use,” he said, “but because it was our first combat, there were many casualties.” “With no combat experience, we simply charged bravely. When drones followed, we should have shot them down or taken cover, but we did not, and that caused many deaths,” he said. “Men my age…without uttering a word, took a drone bomb directly to the head and were killed on the spot,” Mr. Baek said.

Enraged North Korean soldiers went out vowing revenge, but that brought even greater losses. “When comrades died, I saw murderous intent in the eyes of the superiors,” he said. “Driven by revenge, there was no concealment, and we just rushed out onto the open ground, which made the debacle worse.” He said, “In that kind of situation, you do not think much about death,” adding, “Since we were ordered to seize this city, the only thought is that whether one or two of us remain, we must seize it no matter what.”

Are North Korean soldiers really people who transcend death? After a brief pause, Mr. Baek shook his head. “We are human like anyone elsewho wants to die, and who takes life lightly?” he said. “There is no other way, so you make that choice at a dead end.” He added, “If there is anything you can do, you will not give up everything and die easily.”

Now in his second year of detention, he too hopes to be sent to South Korea. Returning to the North is no longer possible. “First of all, I want to get out of here,” he said. “There is an urgent need to go to South Korea.” “Russian soldiers and Choson soldiers are different. A Choson soldier cannot be a POW,” he said. “Becoming a POW itself is a crime, and if I come into contact with South Koreans here, the crime becomes greater.” He said, “I hope I can go to South Korea rather than to Choson.” Asked whther he worries about being repatriated to North Korea, he said, “Yes. I do.”

The interview ended after five hours. Mr. Ri and Mr. Baek asked us to buy them thick winter clothing because their cells were too cold. Russian strikes on Ukraine focus on energy infrastructure, so even in the capital, Kyiv, electricity comes on for only a few hours a day. As Ukrainian guards urged us along and the cell door closed, the two waved and told us to go carefully. After the interview, the Ukrainian guards were amazed, saying, “This is the first time we have seen North Korean POWs smile.” “It is also the first time they have talked that much,” they said. It seems the long, year-long wait in isolation is the reason.

Kyiv (Ukraine) Kim Young-mi, PD specializing in international conflicts