By February, their large numbers, physical endurance and willingness to advance under fire were combined with improved tactical awareness, such as moving in small groups, as well as support from Russian weapons. They became more integrated with Russian forces. To avoid losses from Ukrainian drone attacks, the North Koreans learned to flank with one side engaging with the attacks while the other struck from the rear in smaller groups. “Why are the Koreans the ones storming? They are better prepared psychologically and physically.”At first, it seemed like a typical Russian assault. Glide bombs smashed into the dugouts of Ukrainians from the 225th Separate Assault Regiment, then waves of enemy infantry advanced in small groups supported by artillery fire.
The infantry kept coming in such numbers through fields and forests that the Ukrainians were soon overwhelmed and pulled back across a river. But something was different in this February attack in the village of Sverdlikovo in Russia’s Kursk province.
As they took new defensive positions on the opposite bank, the Ukrainians tapped into their opponents’ radio channels and heard a language they couldn’t understand. Their adversaries were speaking Korean.
The decisive battles in the Kursk region, from which Ukraine’s army has now largely retreated, show how North Korean forces adapted their once outdated tactics for Europe’s biggest war since World War II with lightning speed.
Their first forays on the battlefield in December were in large groups without support from artillery, drones or armored vehicles, making them easy targets for Ukrainian defenders.
By February, their large numbers, physical endurance and willingness to advance under fire were combined with improved tactical awareness, such as moving in small groups, as well as support from the full Russian arsenal of weapons, from glide bombs to artillery and explosive drones. They became more integrated with Russian forces, and when the North Koreans finished their assaults, Russians would typically take over their positions.
“They kept advancing, advancing, advancing forward,” said Capt. Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of the 225th Regiment, which has been operating in Kursk since Ukraine’s move into the Russian territory in August last year. “We had a company stationed there, while they were attacking in battalions.” While the West has learned from the Ukraine war, including how to strategically use modern equipment such as drones, the fighting is providing the North Koreans with unmatched battlefield experience. Those skills can now be taken home and spread throughout the country’s massive army.
That unnerves North Korea’s own foes in Seoul and Tokyo—already contending with Pyongyang’s growing nuclear threat. Troops from South Korea and Japan, the U.S.’s top Asian allies, haven’t seen such large-scale action in decades, and the Trump administration has signaled a deeper focus on deterring China.
In recent months, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called on his military to gain real combat experience during visits to military schools. Though Kim hasn’t acknowledged the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia, he called on his military to learn capabilities suitable for modern warfare as wars become commonplace around the world. South Korean officials said they detected signs that North Korean troops were learning drone operations and tactics from Moscow. “They pay with blood,” said Shyriaiev, the Ukrainian commander. “But this experience will not go to waste.”
Ukrainian forces in Russia
Russian forces in Ukraine
Kyiv
Area of
detail
UKRAINIAN
FORCES
AS OF SEPT. 10
Rylsk
current
Ukrainian
positionS
Sverdlikovo
Sudzha
KURSK REGION
Sumy
UKRAINE
RUSSIA
20 miles
20 km
‘World War II scenes’
Pyongyang was already furnishing its Russian ally with rockets, ballistic missiles and massive shipments of artillery shells when Ukrainian and South Korean intelligence agencies reported in October that thousands of North Korean soldiers were training at bases across Russia.
The soldiers, from elite units of North Korea’s 1.2 million-strong army, were pictured in satellite photos and videos verified by The Wall Street Journal that showed troops lined up neatly on a training ground and freshly dug training trenches, a throwback feature of the war.
“There are millions of them here,” says a man in one of the videos, in Russian, as he films North Korean soldiers walking through a training camp in Sergeevka, a small village 140 miles from North Korea in Russia’s far east. The Russian soldier sounds amazed but scornful about their arrival, calling the new recruits “a horde.” The handful of videos show North Korean troops jogging across a training camp or receiving equipment and documents, all of them wearing brand-new Russian uniforms.
In December, the roughly 12,000 troops were sent to the Kursk province, where Russian forces were struggling to eject Ukrainian troops who had crashed across the border in August, embarrassing the Kremlin by seizing and holding dozens of towns and villages. Seoul’s military said North Korea dispatched an additional 3,000 troops this year.
At first, they were kept off the front lines, digging trenches and offering logistical support. But after thousands of Russian troops, many from elite units, were quickly chewed up in wasteful assaults, the North Koreans were deployed to the battlefield. The soldiers quickly distinguished themselves with an ideological fervor and physical endurance far superior to their tactical awareness.
Videos shot from Ukrainian drones showed them trekking in the winter cold across barren fields in large groups with no support from artillery or armored vehicles. They proved easy targets for Ukrainian explosive drones and artillery. The soldiers would press forward even as their neighbors were cut down.
Soldiers from the 8th Regiment of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces recounted an early battle with North Korean troops in mid-December. The nine-person team, tasked with helping defend positions and obtaining proof of the presence of North Korean troops, joined a skirmish alongside other Ukrainian soldiers that was so intense it lighted up the night sky “like a laser show,” said a soldier with the call sign Bulat who took part in the battle.
The North Koreans were about 300 yards away from the Ukrainian positions, with a valley separating them. After the sun came up, they began attacking.
“It was impossible to count them, there were too many of them,” said Volodymyr, one of the men who fought them.
The North Koreans would push forward even as their compatriots were wounded or killed alongside them. Upon being attacked they would pull back slightly, regroup and press on again. They attempted to encircle the Ukrainians and the gunfire never stopped, sometimes giving the impression that 15 people were shooting at once.
“It was like scenes from World War II, they were just running,” Bulat said. “They charged ahead and shouted in Korean, there was a lot of shouting in Korean.”
The Ukrainians realized the Koreans weren’t using radios, and all the commands were given by shouts, which helped Ukrainians identify where they were.
After four hours of battle, one North Korean soldier got within about 20 yards of the Ukrainians, who shot him and took him prisoner. Four more hours later, the Ukrainian team had to withdraw after running low on ammo attempting to repel a powerful push from the North Koreans that followed the capture of the prisoner. The North Korean later died of wounds sustained during evacuation, when the Russian side had unleashed “a sea of fire” on the special forces soldiers attempting to get away. Twenty-one North Koreans were killed and 40 wounded in the battle, according to a count by the Special Operations Forces. All nine of the Ukrainian special-forces team made it out.
The prisoner wore a new uniform and boots that were unmuddied by the landscape, indicating he was likely sent into battle immediately after arriving at the front, the Ukrainians said.
While the North Koreans’ tactics weren’t sophisticated, the sheer number of soldiers charging at the Ukrainians was unsparing. After about three weeks in Kursk, the North Koreans had about 3,000 dead and wounded men, said Ukrainian and U.S. officials at the time. The North Koreans now have sustained around 5,000 casualties, with a third of those killed in action, according to one Western official. Facing the new enemy on the battlefield, the Ukrainians took measures to find out more about them. When they encountered a dead North Korean, special forces operators would clip hair and take cheek swabs to carry out tests, in part to prove the soldiers were North Korean. They would gather documents to be sent to South Koreans for translation.
Tests showed that many of the North Koreans had scurvy, an illness caused by a lack of vitamin C. Some of them had stuffed cheap sausages into their grenade pouches, a special forces operator said.
But even as the North Koreans made inexperienced moves on the battlefield, Ukrainians had difficulty taking them prisoner, because many chose death over capture.
Decades ago, North Korean special forces were trained to save one bullet in their sidearm for themselves and pull the trigger after shouting “Long live leader Kim Il Sung!” if they were captured. Now the tactic has changed to detonating a grenade, said Michael Madden, a nonresident fellow at the Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
In December, one North Korean soldier in Kursk, surrounded by Ukrainian special forces, detonated a grenade after shouting, “General Kim Jong Un!” Two prisoners Ukrainians managed to capture alive had to be coaxed out of taking their own lives.
The two men claimed they didn’t know why they were going to war. “I thought the South Koreans were among the Ukrainians,” said Ri, a 26-year-old North Korean prisoner held in Ukraine, in an interview.
Ukraine said North Korean troops faced scorn from Russian troops. Their intercepts of Russian communications show troops dismissing their Korean partners and using racial slurs, underscoring the uneasy alliance at the heart of Moscow’s attempts to oust Ukraine from Kursk. In one intercepted radio communication, a Russian warns a fellow soldier to be careful in a village because their “allies” are wandering around unsure of who is enemy or ally. “I wanted to talk to them, but they all ran off somewhere,” the Russian soldier said on the recording, shared with the Journal by a Ukrainian military-intelligence official.
The soldier was asked which allies. “The ones that like eating dogs for breakfast,” he said. But the North Koreans were quickly adapting, according to military analysts, soldiers who fought them and documents taken off the troops by the Ukrainians.
One of the quickest adaptations came against the drones that litter the sky across the front lines. When first deployed, the North Koreans simply stared at the drones, not comprehending that they posed a threat. But, very quickly, they learned tactics to avoid or destroy them, videos posted by Ukrainian officials and documents analyzed by the Human Rights Foundation’s Korea desk show, such as using one man as bait while others shoot at the drone.
At least one North Korean soldier, possibly an officer, was found dead with a drone detector—which Russians use to detect drones and take evasive action. It is unlikely Kim’s troops knew how to use the technology when they were deployed to the battlefield in mid-December.
To avoid losses from Ukrainian drone attacks, the North Koreans learned to flank the enemy with one side engaging with the attacks while the other struck from the rear, the documents showed, and to break up into smaller groups to avoid being mowed down by the Ukrainians. “They encountered modern warfare, and they’re learning from it,” said Kot, a special forces soldier who has fought against North Koreans.
The documents taken from North Korean troops show careful reports of battlefield movements and a detailed accounting of the equipment used.
“Yesterday, a soldier from 3rd company 3rd platoon mistook an animal for a person and fired accidentally,” said a note dated Dec. 5 reviewed by the Journal. “Conduct soldier education to prevent accidental shootings, thoroughly investigate, and ensure proper duty performance.” The documents showed the North Koreans were struggling to integrate with Russian troops, noting they needed Russian intelligence on Ukraine’s drone launch sites or artillery positions to pre-emptively strike them and minimize casualties. Eventually, to help the North Korean infantry, the Russians used their own high-end drones, and dropped larger bombs on Ukrainian soldiers and on infrastructure and supply vehicles to cut them off.
At the end of March in North Korea, Kim inspected a new early-warning aircraft and small suicide drones that state media claimed incorporated artificial-intelligence technology. Analysts said North Korea likely converted a Russian-made cargo aircraft, while Seoul’s military said Moscow may have helped with the internal system and parts. Kim called on officials to make unmanned equipment and AI a top priority in modernizing the military, state media said.
Back in battle
After taking massive losses early on, North Korean troops withdrew from the Kursk battlefield in early January. They returned about a month later, as Russia was accelerating its efforts to oust Ukrainians from its territory. The Kremlin had made a win in the region a priority to deny Ukraine a bargaining chip in peace negotiations, and deployed some of its best drone operators there. Since then, North Korean soldiers have been among the most valuable on the battlefield, as better integration with Russian forces and superior tactics combined with their endurance, Ukrainian soldiers and analysts said.
North Korean commanders sit with the Russians and pass instructions down in Korean, said an official at Ukraine’s military-intelligence agency. On the ground level, North Koreans understand elementary words of Russian that they would have learned in training.
In a war where drones have made the survival of infantry even more perilous, the North Koreans’ willingness to advance under fire is a crucial asset. “Because of the sheer mass that rushed forward, they began to gain some ground,” said Shyriaiev, the Ukrainian commander. The village his men were defending was along one of the vital logistics routes used by Ukrainians to supply their armed forces on Russian territory.
The Russians had unloaded everything they had on the Ukrainians defending it. They used fiber-optic drones, which aren’t vulnerable to electronic signal jamming, a main defense against the aerial craft.
Their aviation dropped glide bombs—the big, cheap and hard-to-defend-against explosives usually reserved for targeting equipment—on positions where only two or three Ukrainians were defending.
“We couldn’t even approach them to find human remains, to identify them and give them a proper farewell,” Shyriaiev said.
With bridges bombed to cut the Ukrainians off, the North Korean infantry moved against the Ukrainians under cover of artillery fire. Pressing forward through fields and a small wooded area, they used tactics adopted by the Russian infantry, moving in smaller groups of three to five people, said Shyriaiev.
Similar scenes played out across Kursk in subsequent weeks, according to soldiers and analysts. The push that forced Shyriaiev’s troops back in the north of the Ukrainian-held territory was mirrored in the south, creating a pincer that allowed Russian drone pilots to strike vehicles used to supply Ukrainian forces.
By mid-March, the largely cut-off Ukrainians had mostly retreated from the Kursk region and were defending a sliver of hilly territory on the Russian side of the border.
Looking at the North Koreans’ unflinching advances under deadly fire made Shyriaiev realize a key advantage they hold over the Ukrainians: an apparent disregard for the value of human life, surpassing even that of the Russians.
“Why are the Koreans the ones storming? They are better prepared psychologically and they are better prepared physically,” he said. “In Kursk, they completed their mission.”
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