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Yang continued: “North Korean soldiers are very brave, I think, especially those of the Storm Corps. They are willing to die for their country. But the problem is that passion does not mean effective fighting skills… [They suffered] a lot of blood in the early phase of the Kursk campaign, but they learned the lessons of modern drone warfare.”
“Cannon fodder”, is how “Sultan”, a soldier with Ukraine’s 95th Air Assault Brigade described North Korean troops. He faced them in the battle for Kursk at the end of 2024.
“They would start with a large assault group, then another 15-20 men would be sent to the same position, and then more after that. The North Koreans operated differently. They were moving all the time. That gave them a certain advantage, but not a decisive one,” he recalled recently in Kiev.
Communication between them and their Russian allies appeared poor, he said, and their soldiers were inadequately equipped.
After the battle, Sultan and his men searched enemy corpses for documents and intelligence information. On the Russian dead they would find personal belongings, identification and equipment. “But when we specifically searched the North Koreans, the only thing we found on them was simply ammunition. We checked absolutely all the little pockets – there were no documents, nothing at all,” he explained.
Other Ukrainian soldiers reported that the North Koreans lacked body armor, winter clothing and helmets.
In a chilling video of a Ukrainian attack, a wounded North Korean soldier lies prone on the snow-covered ground in a forested area. As the Ukrainians follow, he detonates a grenade under his chin after calling out the name of his leader Kim Jong Un with his last words.
In April 2025, at a memorial service in Pyongyang at the newly created Museum of Foreign Military Operations, Kim praised heroes who choose suicide over imprisonment.
In a speech to family members, with Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov in attendance, he said they were “heroes who without a doubt decided to self-detonate, suicide attack, to defend the great honor”.
