A third of the troops North Korea deployed to western Russia’s Kursk Oblast late last year has been killed or wounded, according to Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky. Col. Ants Kiviselg, the head of the Estonian defense forces’ intelligence center, confirmed the claim.
But that doesn’t mean the North Koreans aren’t “serious warriors,” in the assessment of Volodymyr Demchenko, a Ukrainian soldier and filmmaker. In particular, the North Koreans “have impeccable marksmanship training,” Demchenko explained.
North Korea deployed its 11th Army Corps to Kursk in October. North Korean anti-tank vehicles, howitzers, rocket launchers and air-defense vehicles tagged along.
The 11th Army Corps’ 12,000 troops joined the roughly 48,000 Russians battling a Ukrainian invasion of Kursk that kicked off in August. After six months of bitter fighting, 20,000 Ukrainians still hold 250 square miles of the oblast.
The North Koreans launched their first assaults in December, marching on foot across snowy fields to attack Ukrainian lines. Despite suffering horrific casualties to Ukrainian mines, artillery and drones, the North Koreans kept coming—and pushed the outnumbered Ukrainians out of at least one front-line village.
The infantry-first assaults, largely lacking support from armored vehicles, aren’t a uniquely North Korean phenomenon. Ukrainian drones are everywhere all the time, making it virtually impossible for Russian and North Korean vehicles to break cover. Tanks “simply don’t reach the line for launching an attack,” according to one Russian blogger. They get droned from miles away.
Some Russian tank commanders keep trying. Kriegsforscher, a Ukrainian drone operator in Kursk, recently counted 75 wrecked Russian vehicles that he claimed no other observer had reported. Of course, there were 34 wrecked Ukrainian vehicles, too. The sheer scale of the mechanized destruction should “tell a lot about heavy fighting in this area,” Kriegsforscher wrote.
The infantry bear the brunt of the fighting—and the suffering. More than 200 North Koreans were killed or wounded in their first assault in Kursk. One failed assault earlier this month may have left 400 Russian casualties on the ground. By mid-January, 3,800 of the North Korean 11th Army Corps’ 12,000 troops had been killed, injured or—much less likely—captured.
The small handful of North Koreans the Ukrainians have captured is indicative of the ruthlessness of the combined Russia-North Korean army, according to Zelensky. “Russian forces and other North Korean military personnel usually execute their wounded to erase any evidence of North Korea’s involvement in the war against Ukraine,” Zelensky claimed.
Injured North Koreans sometimes kill themselves, sparing their comrades the ugly responsibility. “They are utterly hardened types who, when wounded, follow a single pattern: pull the pin, put a grenade to their head and goodnight,” Demchenko wrote.
Incredibly, North Korean losses might be higher if not for their excellent marksmanship training. Unlike poorly trained Russian recruits, the typical North Korean infantryman has spent years preparing for battle. “The statistics on the small drones they have destroyed attest to this fact,” according to Demchenko.
Ukraine’s small explosive drones still kill a lot of North Koreans. But they’d kill even more if the North Koreans weren’t shooting down many of the drones.
Depleted by a third, the North Korean 11th Army Corps might need reinforcements—and soon. It’s not clear that Pyongyang has committed to deploying more troops. But the North Korean regime is certainly incentivized to keep sending men. Moscow is reportedly trading key military technologies in exchange for the extra manpower.
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