North Korean Soldiers Fighting With Outdated Weapons, Ukrainian Sergeant Says

Their cigarette lighters and AK-47s all seem to have been provided by the Russians, he said.

By Park Jaewoo and Lee Sangmin for RFA Korean

A photo made by the Ukrainian drone warfare unit Magyar’s Birds, purports to show the bodies of North Korean soldiers killed in the Kursk region. Part of the image has been blurred by RFA.Credit:Ukraine Military Magyar’s Birds via RFA

North Korean soldiers are fighting with deteriorated supplies and outdated weapons and may have been carrying no food rations during their recent combat operations in Russia’s Kursk region, a Ukrainian special operations sergeant told Radio Free Asia.

Mykhailo Makaruk of the 8th Special Operations Regiment said he came to the realization after searching through uniforms of North Korean soldiers who had been killed in Russia’s Kursk region.

“They have no military food in their bags. They have some grenades but it’s not even the Soviet type,” Makaruk said in an interview with RFA on Friday that was conducted in English. “It’s bullshit grenades. And they have lower level military medicine kits.”

Up to 12,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia to support its war efforts against Ukraine in Kursk, according to Ukraine and the U.S.

Ukraine has reported more than 3,000 North Korean casualties while South Korea estimates at least 1,100 North Koreans have been killed or wounded.

In a briefing on Friday, White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby said there have been more than 1,000 North Korean casualties in the past week alone.

A North Korean soldier with red tape on his leg, used to identify North Korean soldiers, fires at a Ukrainian drone attack.Credit:Ukrainian Special Operations Forces via RFA

The North Korean military has been mounting “hopeless” attacks on Ukrainian forces in Kursk on the orders of the Russian and North Korean military leadership, Kirby said, adding that North Korean human wave tactics “haven’t really been all that effective.”

There have been no signs of an additional deployment of soldiers from North Korea, despite the recent high casualty numbers, the Pentagon’s Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters in Washington on Monday.

“Can’t say that we’re seeing more being sent, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t send more in the future,” she said.

Cigarette lighters

Makaruk said the North Koreans appear to have Soviet standards for training, and all of their equipment –- including Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles -– seem to have been provided by the Russians.

That included smaller items, such as Russian cigarettes as well as multiple lighters that they may have been collecting as souvenirs or for use as barter currency, he said.

Makaruk spoke to RFA after rotating from the combat zone to a rear Ukrainian military operations area.

He said he also found ID cards that labeled the North Korean troops as “non-combat soldiers” who were carrying out “civilian occupations.”

The Ukrainian military has previously said that North Korean soldiers are using fake ID cards with Russian-style names to hide their identities.

The signature field on the cards seen by Makaruk contained just a handwritten Korean name that appeared to have been written with a different type of writing instrument.

Makaruk didn’t provide any relevant documents or photos, and RFA was unable to independently verify his claims.

Language barrier

Meanwhile, a Russian prisoner of war said in a video released on Telegram that the North Korean military has its own command system separate from the Russian military.

The prisoner, identified as Alyoshin Alexey, also said that there is a serious language barrier between the Russians and North Koreans, most of whom don’t speak Russian. There are no interpreters built into North Korean units, he said.

The video was posted to Telegram on Monday by the pro-Ukrainian international civic group InformNaplam.

Alyoshin Alexey said he is a member of the Russian Army’s 352nd Motorized Infantry Regiment and was active in Kursk when North Korean soldiers began appearing in the area on Dec. 10.

There have been several friendly fire incidents between the two sides that have resulted in casualties, he said.

Also, he noted that the North Korean military usually attempts to collect the bodies of dead soldiers from the battlefield possibly because they don’t want to leave evidence that could identify them as North Korean.

Neither Russia nor North Korea have confirmed the presence of North Korean troops in the region.

Earlier in December, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian forces of burning the faces of dead North Korean soldiers to keep their deployment secret.

Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.