(Updated: )
Editor's note: President Volodymyr Zelensky and the SBU published photos and videos of the captured North Korean soldiers, but the Kyiv Independent chose not to publish them at this time for ethical reasons.
Ukrainian troops captured two North Korean soldiers as prisoners of war (POWs) in Russia's Kursk Oblast, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Jan. 11.
"This task was not easy," he said in a Telegram post.
"Usually, Russia and other North Korean military personnel finish off their wounded and do everything possible to ensure that no evidence of the participation of another state — North Korea — in the war against Ukraine is preserved."
The two wounded soldiers received necessary medical care and are in the custody of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Kyiv, according to Zelensky. The president applauded Ukrainian paratroopers and soldiers from the Special Operation Forces for capturing the North Koreans.
North Korea deployed around 12,000 soldiers in Kursk Oblast, where Ukraine launched a surprise cross-border incursion in August 2024 to bring the war to Russia, a senior Ukrainian official familiar with the intelligence told the Kyiv Independent in December 2024.
Zelensky's statement comes nearly two weeks after the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) said that Ukrainian troops had captured a wounded North Korean soldier in late December who died soon of his wounds.
"We confirmed through a friendly nation's intelligence organization that a North Korean soldier, captured alive on Dec. 26, died a short while ago as (his) wounds worsened," the NIS said on Dec. 27, as cited by South Korean Yonhap News Agency.
Applauding the "irrefutable evidence" of North Korean soldiers' participation in the Russian war against Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on Jan. 11 that the POWs are being questioned with the help of Korean translators and South Korean intelligence.
Paula Erizanu
One of the North Korean POWs said he was born in 2005 and was a rifleman who had been going through military service in North Korea since 2021, according to the SBU.
"It is noteworthy that the prisoner, like the Russian military at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, emphasizes that he was supposedly going for training and not for a war against Ukraine," the SBU said in its Telegram post.
The other POW was born in 1999 and has served in the North Korean army since 2016 as a sniper reconnaissance officer, the SBU said, citing its preliminary data.
The first POW was issued with an ID document under the name of another person from Russia's Tuva Republic, while the second one had no documents at all.
The Special Operation Forces shared a video purporting to show the capture of the North Korean soldiers in Kursk Oblast by operatives of the Tactical Group 84.
"After evacuating them from the battlefield, the Special Operation Forces operatives provided first aid to the North Korean captives," the statement read.
Western nations condemned the two authoritarian states' deepening cooperation, with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin calling it a clear sign of Moscow's growing desperation on Jan. 9.
The first small-scale combat clashes between Ukrainian and North Korean troops happened in November 2024, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said. Then, in December, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that a "significant number" of North Korean soldiers had begun participating in assault operations in Kursk Oblast.
North Korean troops have thus far suffered over 1,000 casualties since December, though other estimates are much higher, Austin said on Jan. 9. Zelensky placed the number of North Korean casualties as high as 4,000, but the figures cannot be independently verified.
Only limited videos of the North Korean soldiers appeared online, making it difficult to draw conclusions about their combat abilities.
Asami Terajima
