A Blog by Jonathan Low

 

Jan 20, 2025

How Elite Ukraine Commandos Planned, then Captured A North Korean Soldier

Even though North Koreans had been fighting for Russia in Kursk oblast since late fall, Ukrainian forces had been unable to capture one because they either died, committed suicide to avoid capture or were killed by their comrades if injured, all to support the Russian and North Korean claims that Ukraine was lying about North Korean troops. 

So Ukrainian special forces carefully planned a raid, focusing on a small North Korean troop concentration in a Kursk forest. They engaged the North Koreans, killed some, forcing others to retreat - and then searched for wounded, one of whom they eventually found and convinced to surrender. JL

Jane Lytvyenko and Dasl Yoon report in the Wall Street Journal:

A Ukrainian special forces team for several days studied a group of eight North Koreans in a forest in Kursk, planning the mission, selecting routes in and out. The Ukrainian team dressed in camouflage to blend in with late-winter foliage and set out at midday on Jan. 9. They ambushed the North Koreans, then swept the area for wounded and closed in on one lying alone and injured. He gave up. For months, thousands of North Korean soldiers had been killed or injured, but none captured. Some had been killed by their own side to prevent their capture after they sustained wounds; others had chosen to kill themselves rather than surrender. The POW serves as proof of North Korean participation in Russia's war. 

The Ukrainian special-forces team closed in on the North Korean lying alone and injured in a forest in Russia’s Kursk region. Spotting the Ukrainians, the young soldier brandished a hand grenade in a desperate threat.

The Ukrainian team’s commander, a captain with the call sign Green, stepped forward to talk him down using the few phrases of Korean he had learned just for this eventuality.

“Brother, everything’s all right,” Green tried to tell him.

Up until that moment earlier this month, thousands of North Korean soldiers, fighting a war miles from home on Russia’s side, had been killed or injured, but none of them captured. Some had been killed by their own side to prevent their capture after they sustained wounds; others had chosen to kill themselves rather than surrender, at least one after calling out the name of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, according to videos and accounts provided by Ukraine’s military.

Now, the team from the 8th Regiment of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces who were surrounding the North Korean soldier faced a delicate challenge: taking him prisoner while staying alive themselves.

Russia and North Korea haven’t publicly acknowledged the deployment of what Kyiv and its Western allies say are 12,000 of Pyongyang’s troops to the battlefield of the biggest war in Europe since World War II. Ukrainian officials say the use of North Korean troops is a sign that the war is taking on a new, global dimension as it heads toward a fourth year, and Kyiv wants a decisive response from its allies.

The North Korean troops first appeared on the battlefield in mid-December, deployed in Russia’s Kursk region partially occupied by Ukraine since August.

Ukrainian incursion into Russia

A map showing the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk region in Russian territory. The smaller map shows the extent of Russian forces in the Ukraine.

Ukrainian advances in Russia

Russian forces

Front-line areas

Kyiv

Area of

detail

Rylsk

RUSSIA

Sudzha

KURSK REGION

Sumy

UKRAINE

20 miles

20 km

Note: As of Jan. 15
Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project
Andrew Barnett/WSJ

Used in infantry attacks and largely unsupported by armored vehicles or artillery, the North Koreans have appeared in videos shot from Ukrainian drones—cut down as they trek across barren fields. Ukrainian soldiers say they have been impressed by the North Koreans’ willingness to press forward even as their comrades perish alongside them.

Russia hasn’t publicly admitted to using soldiers from another country’s army, and the documents found by Ukrainian troops on deceased North Koreans appear to have been issued to show them originating from Russia.

Ukrainian troops are taking risks to capture North Koreans on the battlefield to prove their involvement, but Russian and North Korean troops are doing everything possible to hide and eliminate wounded North Korean soldiers, South Korean officials say.

 

“Our combatants, who saw other comrades fall, ruthlessly killed those attempting to surrender,” say documents retrieved from an unnamed North Korean army officer by Ukrainian forces after he had been killed in combat. The documents were published by the Human Rights Foundation’s Korea desk, which has been assisting Ukraine’s special forces in analyzing documents recovered from North Korean soldiers.

North Korean troops have also chosen death over capture, Ukrainian soldiers say, carrying a grenade with which to blow themselves up or, in rare cases, a shiv with which to cut their arteries. One North Korean detained by Ukrainians was taken alive before but, heavily wounded, he died during transportation, according to Ukrainian officials.

“Their motivation is at a high level,” said Green. “Their physical training is at a high level, and their readiness to die is the same.”

In January, Green’s group devised the operation to capture a North Korean prisoner.

For several days, the special forces team carefully studied a group of eight North Koreans in a forest in Kursk, planning the mission and selecting routes in and out, the Ukrainian team dressed in camouflage to blend in with late-winter foliage and set out at midday on Jan. 9.

The Ukrainians picked their way across a minefield—the shortest route—and ambushed the North Koreans, who quickly retreated. “They understood they couldn’t fight us,” Green said.

That is just how the Ukrainians had planned it. Now, they could sweep the area for any wounded soldiers. At first, they didn’t notice the man lying quietly on the cold ground among the trees. Once they spotted him, Green approached. The North Korean held up a grenade, the Ukrainian officer recalled, as if to threaten to blow himself up.

Green tried out the hastily learned Korean phrases, then switched to Russian: “Everything is all right. I’m helping.” Green and his men also had to stay alive, ready to scatter at a moment’s notice.

“I was constantly watching his hands,” he said.

With hand gestures, Green showed the first aid he wanted to perform on the man’s injured leg. The North Korean lifted his hand and swooped it down, seemingly showing that he had been wounded by a drone.

Eventually, he relented and gave up the grenade.

“We treated him like a child. We didn’t want him to hurt himself,” Green said.

The man had discarded all his equipment and weapons other than the grenade, which Green said was typical for North Korean soldiers seeking to improve their mobility in order to flee. Green said he had encountered other dead North Korean soldiers with only cheap sausage stuffed into their grenade pouches, but the one in the woods had no water and no food. In a later interrogation video, the soldier said he had been wounded days earlier and left behind by his comrades.

The Ukrainians started carrying the North Korean back toward their lines.

“And then Armageddon started,” Green said.

Green and his team devised the operation to capture a North Korean prisoner.
Green and his team devised the operation to capture a North Korean prisoner. Photo: Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

Russian howitzers began raining an unusually intense bombardment of shells at the Ukrainians and their captive as they moved through the woods.

Green and his men carried their prisoner across planks of wood laid atop Russian barbed wire. They ran with him through the minefield, then scattered to buildings and basements to await evacuation as artillery shells exploded behind them.

The Russians “used all the resources they had at that moment, simply to get rid of both the Korean and us,” Green said.

 

The Ukrainians put their prisoner in a basement where bodies of deceased North Koreans lay uncollected. The man, who had short black hair and a thin mustache, appeared in shock from the pain.

Apparently fearing torture, he wouldn’t allow himself to be injected with Nalbuphine, a strong painkiller, until a man from the special forces showed him in gestures that they were just trying to move aside his clothes to administer the dose. Seeing his dead comrades, the North Korean asked for a cigarette.

The artillery continued at a rate that surprised even Green, who knows the area and Russian tactics well. As soon as there was a five-minute break in the bombardment, the evacuation vehicle sped toward the pickup point. Green and his men loaded the North Korean aboard, and the vehicle raced away. The special forces had completed their task.

Later, a questioner asked the North Korean man, lying on a bunk bed with a bandaged hand, “Do you know where you are?” He shook his head. “Do you know that you’re fighting against Ukraine?” The prisoner again shook his head.

The interrogation was shown on a video posted by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Jan. 12 announcing that two North Korean prisoners had been captured. The second one, captured separately by paratroopers of the 95th Air Assault Brigade, was also shown in the video, with his head bandaged and jaw badly swollen. He didn’t speak, apparently unable. The North Korean taken by Green’s team, a rifleman who turns 20 years old this year, claimed he believed he was on a training exercise. Later, in the same video, he described watching compatriots die in an attack in early January.

The future of the two prisoners is unclear. Zelensky has said that he’s ready to return them to Kim Jong Un in exchange for Ukrainians in Russian captivity, but for now, they remain in Ukrainian custody.

Interrogating North Korean soldiers will reveal information about the recent state of living and military training in North Korea, and if they decide to defect to South Korea that would prove to be of significant strategic and symbolic value, said Lee Seongmin, director of the Korea Desk at the Human Rights Foundation, which has analyzed documents and notes Ukrainians found. The captured North Korean soldiers couldn’t only help understand why they were deployed and the specific missions that they are assigned to, but also provide an advantage for South Korea to demonstrate Pyongyang’s unlawful activities, he added.

“They serve as living proof of North Korea’s illegal participation in Russia’s war,” Lee said.

In a ceremony in Kyiv on Friday, Zelensky awarded medals to all those involved in the capture of the two North Koreans: Green and his men, as well as the paratroopers who captured the other soldier.

 

In the video showing him on the bunk bed in Kyiv, the young soldier captured by Green and his team asked if the Ukrainians were good people. Told yes by his interrogator, he declared: “I want to live here.”

Moments later, he was asked if he would go back to North Korea. His expression went blank: “I’d go back,” the soldier said, “if I was told to go back.”

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