Captured North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia seek transfer to South Korea
Captured North Korean soldiers want to go to South Korea (photo: Vitalii Nosach, RBC-Ukraine)
Two North Korean soldiers who fought on Russia's side wrote a letter expressing their desire to go to South Korea instead of returning to North Korea, Yonhap reports.
Jang Se-yul, head of a North Korean defectors' group in the South, said that two North Korean prisoners of war, about 20 years old, wrote such a letter in October. The letter was delivered to South Korea earlier this month.
"We've made up our mind to go to South Korea, thinking of those in South Korea as our parents and brothers," the letter says.
In the letter, the prisoners also expressed their gratitude to those who said that the current situation they are facing is "not a tragedy but the beginning of a new life."
The South Korean government said it has informed the Ukrainian government of its readiness to accept North Korean prisoners of war if their intentions are confirmed.
North Korean soldiers fighting against Ukraine
According to estimates by South Korean and Western intelligence agencies, about 10,000 North Korean soldiers may have been sent to Ukraine in 2024 to support Russian forces.
South Korean intelligence has also reported that North Korean soldiers are often ordered to commit suicide to avoid capture. If wounded, they detonate grenades.
In September, South Korea's intelligence service said that about 2,000 North Korean soldiers sent to assist Russia had been killed in the fighting in Ukraine.
On January 11 this year, it became known that Ukrainian defenders captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia's Kursk region. One of them was captured on January 9.
More details about how Ukrainian soldiers managed to do this and what the Koreans themselves say about the war can be read in the report.
