The North Korean corps fighting alongside the Russian military in Kursk Oblast, in western Russia, may have lost 4% of its strength in a single battle along the eastern edge of the 250-square-mile salient that Ukrainian forces carved out of Kursk back in August, according to multiple sources including local journalists and government sources in Kyiv.
Attacking in three waves across open fields outside the village of Plekhove on Saturday, North Korean infantry eventually managed to eject the 100 Ukrainian troops holding the village.
The assault may have involved more than 500 North Koreans, reportedly from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s 92nd and 94th Separate Special Operations Brigades. “Their casualties may have accounted for up to half of the soldiers involved,” Ukrainian journalist Andriy Tsaplienko reported.
Videos and reporting from the weekend attacks around the Kursk salient, which involved a mix of Russian and North Korean troops, may explain how the North Koreans lost so many people.
Maybe. The Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies stressed that much of the information “is being verified.”
The North Koreans apparently attacked in broad daylight, on foot, marching over mines under the watchful eyes of Ukrainian drones—and came under fire from drones and artillery.
“According to those who held the defense in the settlement [of Plekhove], the North Korean soldiers went to the assault en masse or, more precisely, in a crowd,” Tsaplienko reported.
“Ukrainian fighters repelled the first wave of attacks,” Tsaplienko added. “But then there was a second and a third [wave].”
After the surviving Ukrainians retreated to the west and the smoke cleared, trucks hauled away potentially hundreds of dead and wounded North Koreans—together representing a significant percentage of the approximately 12,000-person North Korean 11th Army Corps deployed north of the Kursk salient.
For all their losses around Plekhove, the North Koreans at least gained some ground. The results on the opposite side of the salient may have been less encouraging for Pyongyang’s army as it fights its first major war in decades.
The Ukrainian 17th Heavy Mechanized Brigade, holding the line on the western edge of the salient, claimed it “inflicted considerable losses on the enemy,” possibly including North Koreans. The brigade doesn’t seem to have given up much ground.
The mass assaults by North Korean infantry are all part of Russian commanders’ plan, according to Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation. “The Russians are betting on numbers,” Kovalenko wrote.
How long the North Korean 11th Army Corps can sustain an attritional attack strategy is unclear. The corps may have buried, or sent to the hospital, one of out every 25 of the soldiers under its command just last weekend.
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