Seoul, Feb 19 (EFE).- One of the two North Korean soldiers captured by Ukraine said in an exclusive interview that his superiors made him think he was fighting South Korean soldiers in Ukraine, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Identified only by his surname, Ri, the reconnaissance sniper told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper that he thought he was going “abroad for training” and was unaware he was going into combat in Russia. He added he was also told that the drone operators in Ukraine’s military were South Korean, and that he wishes to apply for asylum in South Korea.
Ri told the Chosun Ilbo reporter that there were officers from North Korea’s Ministry of State Security (intelligence) embedded with each battalion in Kursk.
“They monitored both our duties and our ideology. Before the battle, one of them told me that all the drone operators in Ukraine’s military were South Korean soldiers,” Ri said.
When asked if he had thought he was up against South Korean troops as well as Ukrainian, the newspaper said he nodded.
Ri, who suffered serious injuries to his jaw and arm, said in the interview that most of his battalion (around 65 of them) were killed by Ukrainian drone or artillery attacks and that he would have tried to blow himself up if he had a grenade, as he is aware that being held as a prisoner of war is a betrayal to the North.
“I’m planning to apply for asylum and go to South Korea. Do you think they’ll accept me?” Ri asked the reporter, in the first time that a North Korean soldier held captive in Ukraine has expressed his intention to go to South Korea.
The interview comes after Ukrainian authorities released a video in January of their interrogation of two North Korean soldiers captured in Kursk, with one of them expressing his desire to stay in Ukraine, which could be considered treason in the secretive country.
Ukraine has expressed interest in facilitating the return of North Korean soldiers fighting with Russian troops in Kursk region in exchange for the release of Ukrainian prisoners of war, while Seoul says it has information that Pyongyang has ordered its troops deployed in Russia to commit suicide if they are at risk of being captured by the Ukrainian army.
However, the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch has been calling for humanitarian treatment of North Korean prisoners of war captured by Ukraine in Kursk, and warned of reprisals they could suffer if they are returned to the North.
According to the NGO, this is in line with the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits repatriating people to countries where they would be at risk of persecution or torture.
Kyiv said in early February that some 5,000 North Koreans had been killed or wounded in three months of fighting in Kursk, out of 11,000-12,000 deployed there.
South Korean intelligence estimated in mid-January in a parliamentary commission that at least 300 North Korean soldiers had died in Kursk and that some 2,700 had been wounded.
The National Intelligence Service also said on Feb. 4 that North Korean troops sent to the Russian invasion of Ukraine have not engaged in combat on the front line in Kursk since mid-January.
This assertion corroborates what Ukrainian and US officials said last week – that North Korean troops had been withdrawn from the front for about three weeks due to the large number of casualties, and that they could be receiving additional combat training from the Russian army. EFE
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