SEOUL: A North Korean soldier who was captured while fighting in Russia’s war against Ukraine has died of his wounds, South Korea’s spy agency said on Friday (Dec 27).
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce Russia’s military, including in the Kursk border region where Ukraine mounted a shock border incursion in August.
One of those North Korean soldiers was captured alive by the Ukrainian army on Thursday, a South Korean intelligence source told AFP, adding that the location where he was seized was not known.
Hours later, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said that the soldier had succumbed to his wounds.
“It has been confirmed through an allied intelligence agency that the North Korean soldier captured alive on Dec 26 has just passed away due to worsening wounds,” the South’s spy agency said in a statement.
Friday’s confirmation came days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or wounded” so far as they joined Russian troops in combat.
South Korea’s intelligence service had previously put the number of killed or wounded North Koreans at 1,000, saying the high casualty rate could be down to an unfamiliar battlefield environment and their lack of capability to counter drone attacks.
Pyongyang’s soldiers were also being “utilised as expendable frontline assault units”, lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun said, speaking last week after a briefing by South Korea’s spy agency.