Why a fresh wave of North Korean soldiers may fight in Russia's war in Ukraine

An adversary that flooded the battlefield in big formations under fire, apparently heedless of drones and automatic weapons. An elite unit of ghost soldiers who preferred suicide to surrender. They fought and died by the thousands, then seemed to disappear from the front.

North Korea’s troops were dispatched by Pyongyang to fight alongside Russian forces as they tried to repel a Ukrainian offensive on Moscow’s territory at the end of 2024. The cost was severe, with as many as 3,000 killed in action out of the 13,000 deployed.

In time, they adjusted their tactics and, together with Russia, pushed Ukrainian forces out of Kursk region. In military terms, little has been heard of them since, but according to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, North Korean forces and their weapons are soon set to reappear dramatically in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Last month, Zelensky said up to 50,000 North Koreans would be deployed in Russia, revising an earlier estimate of 30,000 troops. He urged South Korea to help with his country’s air defence.

But after such heavy losses, why would North Korea send more men to fight for Russia, and what became of the soldiers it sent initially?

"They're still there", said Dr Yang Uk, research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, Center for Foreign Policy and National Security in Seoul. "They are defending Russian territory for another counterattack from Ukraine. And we believe that some of the engineer corps or workers might be in [the Russian-occupied] Donbas area but that's not the combat troops."

Zelensky has warned that as many as 50,000 North Korean troops could be deployed in Russia

Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, HUR, says 8,500 North Korean servicemen are still on Russian territory. They are split into four brigades, operating as part of the "North" Group of Forces and tasked with guarding the state border of the Russian Federation in the Kursk Region against Ukrainian incursions.

"They do not participate in active combat operations. Units of the Korean People's Army have not been observed in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine," HUR said in a statement to the BBC.

For North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, the Kursk deployment was a gamble, the largest combat force his country had ever sent abroad. (In 1973, North Korea sent 1,500 military personnel and instructors to Egypt during the Yom Kippur war with Israel, and in the late 1960s, an estimated 87 North Korean pilots fought for the North Vietnamese against US forces).

And despite the bloodshed, it was a gamble that paid off, bringing huge gains for the isolated and impoverished country and reshaping both its economic and military position. It may also provide a model for even closer military cooperation.

North Koreans, "now know what modern combat is about", said Yang.

The troops sent to Russia came from Storm Corps, the elite of North Korea’s armed forces. North Korea is an isolated, totalitarian, heavily militarised state with intense indoctrination.

At first, neither Russia nor North Korea admitted they were there. Ukrainian forces first encountered them in November 2024, and the first live North Korean prisoners of war were not captured until January of the following year.

Russia did not acknowledge their role until April 2025, when Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, praised their "heroism" on the battlefield.

For Kim Jong Un, sending North Korean troops to Kursk was a gamble. It was the largest combat force North Korea had ever sent overseas

Yang said, "North Korean soldiers are very brave I mean, especially those of Storm Corps. They are willing to die for their country. But the problem is that passion doesn't mean efficient combat skills... [They suffered] a lot of bloodshed in the early stage 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 fought them in the battle for Kursk at the end of 2024.

"They would begin with one large assault group, then another 15–20 men would be sent into the same position, and then more after that. The North Koreans operated differently. They kept moving all the time. That gave them a certain advantage, but not a decisive one," he recalled recently in Kyiv.

He said communication with their Russian allies seemed poor, and their equipment was inadequate.

After fighting, Sultan and his men would search enemy bodies for documents and intelligence. On Russian dead they found personal items, identification and equipment. "But when we searched the North Koreans specifically, the only thing we found on them was simply ammo. We checked absolutely all the small pockets - there were no documents, nothing at all," he explained.

Other Ukrainian soldiers said the North Koreans lacked body armour, winter clothing and helmets.

In one harrowing video from a Ukrainian assault, a wounded North Korean soldier lies face down on snow in a wooded area. As Ukrainians move closer, he blows himself up with a grenade beneath his chin, after shouting, in his final words, the name of his leader, Kim Jong Un.

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 capture.

In a speech to relatives, with Russia's Defence Minister Andrey Belousov in attendance, he said they were "heroes who unhesitatingly opted for self-blasting, suicide attack, in order to defend the great honour".

Speaking to relatives of the soldiers, with Russian Defence Minister Andrey Belousov in attendance, Kim described them as "heroes" who had chosen to sacrifice themselves in battle

North Korea has never officially confirmed the death toll from the Kursk operation, but a BBC Korea analysis of the memorial site estimated that 2,300 soldiers were killed fighting for Russia.

Ukraine’s intelligence service, HUR, puts the number at 3,000 killed and 1,500 wounded.

Beyond the combat experience, why did North Korea sacrifice so many of its best troops in a foreign war?

According to Lim Soo-ho, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul, the deployment has brought the country a much-needed economic boost and a geopolitical gain.

He estimates that arms sales to Russia and the troop deployment have brought the impoverished country close to $10bn.

"North Korea's annual GDP is estimated at around $30bn (£22bn)," he told me. "That means they earned a third of a year's GDP over two and a half years through weapons exports and troop deployment, which, for an economy as small as North Korea's, is a very significant effect."

In return for its manpower, North Korea receives food, oil and hard currency. China says it complies with sanctions on Pyongyang, but Russia does not.

Just as important, cooperation with Russia has reduced North Korea’s long-term dependence on China.

So in Beijing in September last year, Kim Jong Un was able to stand shoulder to shoulder with China’s leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the first public meeting of all three. Not quite as an equal, but no longer reliant on China alone.

In September last year, Kim Jong Un stood alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the first public meeting of all three leaders

That matters, Lim said: "It's a major geopolitical shift".

"Whenever things got difficult under isolation, North Korea would reach out first toward South Korea, Japan, or especially the US to try to normalise relations, that was the pattern of Korean Peninsula diplomacy. But now that ties with Russia have tightened, Kim Jong Un argues that the world is in a new Cold War, a multipolar system."

What began as economic and military expediency with Russia appears to be evolving into something deeper and longer term. At this year’s 9th Party Congress of the Korean Workers' Party, Kim Jong Un sounded emboldened and spoke of achievements that his grandfather Kim Il Sung and father Kim Jong Il never reached.

But risks remain. So far, no North Koreans have fought on Ukrainian or Russian-occupied Ukrainian land. If they did, there would be diplomatic repercussions, especially in South Korea, an ally of Ukraine, though one that has so far provided only "non-lethal" aid.

President Zelensky has stressed this as he pushes Seoul to supply advanced military equipment, including air defence systems. He said that since June, preparations had been under way in Russia’s Voronezh region to receive new North Korean forces and claimed Pyongyang was preparing to send more ballistic weapons to Russia.

"Russia is helping North Korea learn modern warfare, improve its weapons, and gain real combat experience. This poses a threat to every country in Asia that lies within range of North Korean missiles," he said in a presidential address in July.

Only two North Korean soldiers were captured alive in battles with Ukrainian forces. That is an astonishingly small number, given that between 11,000 and 14,000 fought in the Kursk campaign. (Another was captured alive but died from combat-related injuries, according to the South Korean National Intelligence Service).

Only two North Korean soldiers have been captured alive by Ukrainian forces

Like their comrades who choose suicide over capture, neither man intended to be taken alive.

"For Joseon (North Korean) soldiers, becoming a prisoner of war itself is a crime. That just isn't an option. We can't become POWs," one of the captured men told a South Korean MBC documentary crew who interviewed him in prison in Ukraine.

Baek Pyeong-gang, not his real name, lay wounded by a drone strike for four days before being captured. He was tricked into surrendering after mistaking Ukrainian soldiers for his Russian allies.

The second prisoner, Lee Kang-eun, also a pseudonym, told journalist Kim Young-mi that he felt guilty for still being alive. Barely conscious, he was found on the battlefield by Ukrainian soldiers with severe injuries to his arm and jaw.

"I had no grenade or knives on me to self-blast (end my life)," he explained.

He said dozens of his comrades were killed by drones early in the war. The battlefield "reeked of the smell of blood", he said.

Neither man wants to return to North Korea. Lee said he believed his family would be "wiped out" as punishment for his capture. Both have said they want to go to South Korea, and Seoul is prepared to accept them.

One of the North Korean soldiers captured alive said he did not want to return home, believing his family would be "wiped out" as punishment for his capture

Only Russia, not Pyongyang, has requested their return.

But Ukraine, still seeking to pressure Seoul for military aid, has not agreed to hand them over to South Korean authorities. Kyiv says it will respect international human rights obligations that bar the forced repatriation of prisoners of war.

Their fate is still unresolved, but what seems clear is that more North Koreans will join Russia’s war. Their service has immense economic and political value for Pyongyang; Russia also badly needs them.

Four and a half years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it faces a severe manpower shortage. Western and Ukrainian intelligence agencies estimate it is losing about 6,000 more troops each month than it can recruit. Moscow has therefore turned to foreign fighters from Colombia, Kenya, Cameroon and North Korea to keep its ranks filled.

For Russia and North Korea, this is a mutually beneficial relationship, a coalition at a price. In the end, North Korea will keep sending its soldiers to fight in Russia’s war, but only as long as it remains profitable.