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After Months of Using Them as Cannon Fodder by Putin, North Korean Troops Are Pulled From the Front Lines
Hotair ^ | 01/31/2025 | John Sexton

Posted on 01/31/2025 4:55:32 PM PST by SeekAndFind

Starting last last year, North Korea sent a total of about 11,000 highly trained troops to fight in Ukraine on behalf of Russia. But after months of being used as cannon fodder for Putin's war machine, Ukrainian sources say the North Koreans have been pulled off the front lines in recent weeks.

The North Korean troops, sent to bolster Russian forces trying to push back a Ukrainian offensive inside Russia’s borders, have not been seen at the front for about two weeks, the officials said after requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive military and intelligence matters.

The arrival of around 11,000 North Korean troops in Russia in November caused alarm in Ukraine and among its allies in the West, who feared their deployment signaled a significant escalation in the nearly three-year-old war. But in just three months, the North Korean ranks have diminished by half, according to Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander.

How do you lose 5,000 men in three months? Previous reports have described North Korean troops who advance with no armored vehicles and sometimes with no body armor in order to be able to move quickly. They also have come up with a unique approach to dealing with Ukrainian drones.

The North Korean soldiers fighting for Moscow in Russia’s Kursk region are assigned their own patches of land to assault. Unlike their Russian counterparts, they advance with almost no armored vehicles in support.

When they attack, they do not pause to regroup or retreat, as the Russians often do when they start taking heavy losses, Ukrainian soldiers and American officials say. Instead, they move under heavy fire across fields strewed with mines and will send in a wave of 40 or more troops...

They have also developed singular tactics and habits. When combating a drone, the North Koreans send out one soldier as a lure so others can shoot it down. If they are gravely wounded, they have been instructed to detonate a grenade to avoid being captured alive, holding it under the neck with one hand on the pin as Ukrainian soldiers approach.

Ukrainians who have fought them say they are good fighters and brave but their tactics suggest they don't really expect to survive.

The North Koreans take many casualties, Andrii said, but keep sending new units.

“It’s just forward, forward,” he said. “It’s motivation, orders and strict discipline.”...

“It feels like they specifically came here to die, and they know it themselves,” said Oleksii, a platoon commander.

A North Korean defector and former soldier spoke to NBC News about the mindset behind this. He said the troops were being treated as "cannon fodder" and were essentially state-backed mercenaries.

Lee, 38, a North Korean defector and former soldier now living in South Korea, said it is “devastating” to see troops from the reclusive, communist-ruled North being sent abroad by leader Kim Jong Un, “only to then give up their youth for a land that is not even theirs but the foreign land of Russia.”...

Lee, who spent five years in the North Korean military, said the troops had been sent to Russia as mercenaries rather than soldiers, noting that they weren’t wearing their uniforms. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has said they were given Russian military uniforms and Russian-made weapons, along with forged identification documents.

“Even if they die there it does not matter, because North Korea sent them out without officially recognizing them,” Lee said. “They were sent there not to bring honor to the country, but to give up their lives and bring back lots of money.”

Everyone in North Korea has been brainwashed into a cult of personality. Even if they don't fully believe it, they have no other option but to go along with it because anyone who steps out of line in even the smallest way winds up in a network of gulags where people are starved and tortured for resisting the state. Lee, the defector mentioned above, says he hopes some of the soldiers sent to Russia will survive long enough to become defectors themselves.



TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Russia; Ukraine
KEYWORDS: 202411; 404; anydaynowukrainewins; fakenews; norks; northkorea; omgputinputinputin; russia; ukraine; zelviswinsprettysoon
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1 posted on 01/31/2025 4:55:32 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

As Paul Harvey used to say:

“And now the rest of the story”...

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/01/cianyt-remove-north-korea-soldiers-from-ukraines-front-line.html#more


2 posted on 01/31/2025 4:58:34 PM PST by Nextrush (FREEDOM IS EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS-REMEMBER REV. NIEMOLLER)
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To: SeekAndFind

Whatever their training is, they just aren’t in the best of health based on reports of North Koreans who made it to the south and got operated on. They probably lack the comparative strength and endurance of a typical trained soldier of their supposed level.


3 posted on 01/31/2025 4:58:53 PM PST by Jonty30 (If you ate your twin in the womb, your pronouns should be we/us.)
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To: SeekAndFind
North Korean Troops Are Pulled From the Front Lines

They've been Pyongyanked

4 posted on 01/31/2025 4:59:25 PM PST by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
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To: chajin

The poor slobs, is it possible for any of them to defect?


5 posted on 01/31/2025 5:03:17 PM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
How do you lose 5,000 men in three months?

A better question: how does Ukraine claim 5,000 deaths, but can't show one body?

Norks are retreating from Kursk because they won't be able to withstand Trump's upcoming assault on Ukraine "intelligence."

The game's over, Zeepers.

6 posted on 01/31/2025 5:12:16 PM PST by Right_Wing_Madman
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To: Right_Wing_Madman

Leaflets need to be sent. Introduce them to the concept of fragging.


7 posted on 01/31/2025 5:13:51 PM PST by DIRTYSECRET
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To: Jonty30

https://www.politico.eu/article/north-koreans-skilled-fighters-rather-kill-themselves-then-get-captured-ukrainian-soldiers-say/


8 posted on 01/31/2025 5:23:36 PM PST by MrRelevant
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To: SeekAndFind

So much propaganda in this war. Don’t know what to believe.


9 posted on 01/31/2025 5:25:37 PM PST by McGruff (Trump: Joe Biden will go down in history as the worst president ever.)
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To: MrRelevant

There is a reason they kill themselves. They will either be sent to a labour camp to be worked to death or they will be executed to avoid news on the outside world from being spread. They were dead men walking.

https://www.dw.com/en/russias-war-in-ukraine-what-will-happen-to-north-korean-pows/a-71311726


10 posted on 01/31/2025 5:37:35 PM PST by Jonty30 (If you ate your twin in the womb, your pronouns should be we/us.)
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To: SeekAndFind

“Ukrainian sources say”

...and just like that, the North Korean troops that no one ever saw go back to never been seen again.


11 posted on 01/31/2025 6:30:14 PM PST by BobL
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To: SeekAndFind

Months of heavy close combat will chew up any force necessitating a withdrawal for rest and refitting.


12 posted on 01/31/2025 6:52:01 PM PST by fso301
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To: SeekAndFind

Welp, this article is attribute to anonymous Ukrainian sources. Those sources have proven false too many times for me to believe anything they write.


13 posted on 01/31/2025 7:13:16 PM PST by ransomnote (IN GOD WE TRUST)
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To: SeekAndFind

Fake.


14 posted on 01/31/2025 8:21:54 PM PST by Trumpisourlastchance
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To: Jonty30

And the fact that NK will practice collective responsibility against their families and either kill them or jail them.

These really are some poor bastards forced by their Government to fight for another Government, fighting a really ugly WW1 style war, in a strange land, for nothing that can possible matter in the least to them


15 posted on 01/31/2025 8:27:37 PM PST by MNJohnnie (Don't blame me, my congressman is MTG!)
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To: MNJohnnie

Yes, their families will be punished anyway. We should pray for the end of North Korea and pray for its quick end.


16 posted on 01/31/2025 8:33:22 PM PST by Jonty30 (If you ate your twin in the womb, your pronouns should be we/us.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Well. That’s a shame.

How’s the weather?


17 posted on 01/31/2025 9:13:16 PM PST by Organic Panic (Democrats. Memories as short as Joe Biden's eyes)
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To: Right_Wing_Madman

“The game’s over, Zeepers.”

There’s this in the article: “highly trained troops”

How does the writer know this?


18 posted on 02/01/2025 12:58:34 AM PST by rxh4n1
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To: Jonty30

“We should pray for the end of North Korea and pray for its quick end.”

Right. You and what army? That would take a big war. When are you signing up?


19 posted on 02/01/2025 1:06:05 AM PST by rxh4n1
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To: rxh4n1

God’s army?
I did say pray.


20 posted on 02/01/2025 1:31:09 AM PST by Jonty30 (If you ate your twin in the womb, your pronouns should be we/us.)
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