'Arms ablaze, they still charged': Ukrainian forces stunned by North Korea's 'meat assaults'

[A STUDY OF KIM JONG-UN 3]

Feb. 28, 2019, is a day North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will never forget. It is the date of the "no deal Hanoi summit," in which U.S. President Donald Trump walked out of negotiations in Vietnam, an insult the North Korean leader had never experienced before. Could Kim himself have ever imagined that, just over six years later, he would stand shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of China and Russia at the viewing gallery of Tiananmen Square in Beijing in September last year?

Kim’s elevated strategic status is a reality. He is no longer in a hurry. Even if Trump sends another overture, his new position would be to casually ignore it. How did the young leader of Northeast Asia’s poorest nation, once treated merely as a joke, reach his current position? What choices did Kim make to overcome the failure of the Hanoi summit, and how has North Korea changed as a result of those choices? How has this change altered South Korea’s security environment? We must now deal with a Kim of a different caliber. That is why we must study him now. - Ed.

KYIV, Ukraine — Dense fog rolled in for five or six hours every day. In winter, temperatures dropped to minus 8 or 9 degrees Celsius (17.6 to 15.8 Fahrenheit) even at midday.

This was the common scene at the Kursk front in Russia, where North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's army was deployed.

Definitive intelligence on the North Korean troop deployment was passed to Ukrainian field commanders in early December 2024. Not long after, a foreign army of youthful faces made its presence known.

Every dawn, they charged through the fog. That much, at least, they understood — that thick fog offers ideal conditions for special forces infiltration.

But their tactics were strange.

"At first, they didn't seem to know who they were fighting, or whether it was actual combat or a training exercise," a Ukrainian Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who fought in Kursk told the JoongAng Ilbo on Jan. 5.

"There were five of us at our position. Twenty North Korean soldiers came running in a line with no particular tactics. We shot them down. Then, about 10 minutes later, another 20 came in the exact same formation."

"In front of our position — about 150 to 200 square meters [1,615 to 2,150 square feet] — North Korean bodies piled up, 16 to 30 at a time," the lieutenant colonel said. "And not a single one retreated after seeing that. We called it a 'meat attack.'"

For Kim, who walked away from the 2019 Hanoi summit empty-handed, Russia's invasion of Ukraine opened a window of opportunity. Deploying more than 10,000 troops overseas was a first in North Korean history — and for Kim himself, a gamble that risked internal instability.

Initial assessments of the deployed North Korean 11th Corps, known as the Storm Corps, were sharply divided.

Some argued that North Korea had simply sent kids in their teens and early twenties as cannon fodder. Others said the capabilities of North Korean special forces, armed with ideological loyalty, should not be underestimated.

What was their actual combat capability?

To find out, the JoongAng Ilbo traveled to Ukraine early this year and met with military and civilian officials who had directly engaged with North Korean forces or were well-versed in the relevant intelligence.

Their accounts were used to reconstruct the reality of Kim's army. Statements from some active-duty soldiers who could not participate in on-record interviews have been included as indirect quotes.

"We observed multiple times that when North Korean soldiers were killed during combat or offensive operations, Russian forces would 'clean' the area using heavy flamethrowers," said Andriy Chernyak, spokesperson for the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine's Defense Ministry, on Jan. 2. "It appeared they wanted to erase all traces and make the bodies unidentifiable."

According to well-informed sources, the first North Korean prisoner of war captured in Kursk in late December 2024 died shortly afterward.

Unlike two prisoners who were later captured alive — a 27-year-old surnamed Ri and a 22-year-old surnamed Paek, who were widely covered by South Korean media — he left behind no name and no last words. His body was placed in a foreign body bag and stored in a freezer somewhere in Kyiv for several months, with North Korea remaining completely silent.

Many North Korean soldiers faithfully carried out the order to commit suicide before being captured alive.

What exactly were they fighting for, to go this far?

Ukrainian military officials said there is one characteristic that comes to mind every time they speak about North Korean soldiers.

The period during which North Korean troops engaged in actual combat was only about four to five months — from around December 2024, when they were deployed to the battlefield, until April 26 of the following year, when Russia officially declared victory in Kursk.

In the early stages, they used 1960s-style frontal assault and hand-to-hand combat tactics. For most North Korean soldiers, it was likely their first encounter with drones — the defining weapon of the war in Ukraine.

For roughly the first month, the North Korean military did not understand that drones had become a game-changer. In North Korean positions identified by reconnaissance drones, mortars were installed at 20-meter intervals, and barracks were clustered close together. The Ukrainian military struck them immediately using first-person view drones.

Svyatoslav, a 32-year-old lieutenant colonel, served as a battalion commander in Kursk from October 2024 through May of the following year, witnessing the beginning and end of the North Korean deployment.

The sight of North Korean soldiers charging as if begging to be killed remains vivid in his memory.

"It must have been early in the fighting," Svyatoslav said. "One of the North Korean soldiers was already severely wounded in the head and wrapped in bandages.

"He had no weapon, so he made a Molotov cocktail and ran toward our position," Svyatoslav said. "He dropped it twice while running, and the fire caught his hand and set his entire arm ablaze. He kept charging to the end."

The early joint Russia-North Korea operations in Kursk appeared to be a human-shield tactic that ground down North Korean troops.

Due to poor interpretation, instances of North Korean soldiers moving to the wrong areas were frequently caught in Ukrainian military communications intercepts.

Through the first and second deployments, Kim sent up to 14,000 personnel. Including a third-wave engineering unit — 1,000 military personnel and 5,000 civilians — a total of 20,000 personnel were ultimately dispatched to Russia.

According to Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence, excluding the engineering units and civilian support personnel, approximately 12,000 special forces, infantry and artillery- and missile-related mechanized troops were deployed to the Kursk front.

Of those, roughly half are estimated to have become casualties — 1,500 to 2,000 killed and 4,000 to 5,000 wounded.

North Korean troops begin shooting down drones

Losses on that scale would normally prompt consideration of a withdrawal. But Kim chose to absorb the casualties and draw lessons instead.

It did not take long for North Korean troops to master shooting down drones on sight, which is called a "hard kill."

As the new year began, squad- or platoon-level units of 15 to 30 soldiers were reportedly targeting single drones collectively, consistently bringing them down with AKM rifle fire or hand grenades.

This forced changes in Ukraine's drone operations.

"Because North Korean soldiers' marksmanship was so accurate, reconnaissance drones and artillery spotting drones — which flew low on other front lines — had to fly at significantly higher altitudes on the Kursk front," one source explained.

"Analyzing communications intercepts shows that Russians sometimes looked down on North Korean soldiers, calling them 'little beasts'," Chernyak said. "But in our assessment, they are very fast learners."

This was the moment the Storm Corps' true character emerged. The impression of recklessness began to shift toward one of bravery.

"There was a battle at a place called Sverdlikovo village," Svyatoslav said. "When our unit launched an offensive, the Russian special forces were terrified and hid in building basements. All assault operations were carried out by North Korean troops. They would charge first and die, and then the Russian troops would follow."

While North Korean troops bought time, a single Russian special forces battalion could rotate through up to three troop cycles and maintenance periods away from the front line, according to Svyatoslav.

"Visually, we were outnumbered six to one," he said. "North Korean troops contributed in that way, rather than through operational maneuvers."

Volodymyr Kim, 53, a retired sergeant first class who served in combat and instructor roles on the eastern front from the war's start until recently, said that North Korea did not play a role that dramatically reversed the course of the war, but it bought Russia time and supplies.

"Even after exhausting reserve artillery shells over two years, Russia has been able to hold on by using North Korean ammunition," Kim added.

An army built on enforced loyalty

Ukrainian military officials said North Korean troops fought "as if programmed for death" and "like machines until they died."

Not a single soldier stepped back.

This leads to the conclusion that, despite early tactical flaws, the deployed North Korean troops were fundamentally a well-trained elite force.

The proof: Soldiers trained for the Korean Peninsula's mountainous terrain quickly mastered antidrone tactics in open terrain.

Ukrainian officials were particularly struck by the psychological conditioning of the North Korean soldiers. Evidence of loyalty to the regime was visible throughout the spoils recovered from the battlefield.

On the exterior of a North Korean waterproof jacket — one of the Kursk items verified through Ukrainian sources — was a Military Service Honor Medal, 3rd Class, attached.

It is the lowest tier of long-service medals awarded to lower-ranking soldiers.

A 2,000 won banknote found along with it was in relatively good condition. It looked like money that had been carefully saved.

Yura, a civilian volunteer who has been running a military supply support operation in the Kursk region and elsewhere, said it seemed like North Korean soldiers wanted to "leave evidence so that their families back in North Korea would not be punished, or perhaps would receive some reward."

North Korea's Ministry of State Security agents deployed alongside the troops are believed to have been responsible for ideological surveillance and criticism sessions, known as chonghwa.

In the eyes of Ukrainian military personnel, the line between bravery and fear of the regime was paper-thin.

Communications intercepts showed that Russian forces used physical force — including beatings — to compel soldiers who refused to advance.

North Korean troops moved so voluntarily that no such measures were needed, sources said, which made their ideological conditioning and fear of the regime appear all the greater.

Kim Jong-un has already secured various forms of support from Russia in exchange for the deployment.

But this is not the end. It is the beginning.

According to Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence, a large number of deployed forces remain in Kursk — estimates range from 8,000 to 10,000, depending on the analysis.

"We assess that North Korean forces — particularly the deployed generals, such as Ri Chang-ho — are focused on interacting with the Russian regular military while traveling back and forth between Russia and Pyongyang," Chernyak said.

Kim's army, in other words, is now fully occupied with applying its modern warfare experience to the Korean Peninsula.

BY LEE YU-JUNG   [[email protected]]