Headlines
Two captured North Korean soldiers fighting with Russia in its war against Ukraine were not among the 1,000 prisoners of war recently repatriated by Ukraine to Russia due to a request from Seoul, said a South Korean lawmaker.
One North Korean woman described how her father died of starvation. Another said her friends were publicly executed for watching and sharing South Korean television dramas. North Korea’s ambassador appeared unmoved. When he got up to speak, he described it as a political scheme and labeled the women as “human scum.”
North Korean authorities have distributed high-performance handheld radio signal detectors to border security agents as part of an intensified campaign to block residents from making unauthorized phone calls to South Korea, local sources told RFA.
A fire that broke out in an apartment complex in North Korea’s Sinuiju city spread to neighboring homes, destroying over 10 units, after residents hesitated to call for help due to the high costs of dispatching fire trucks, two sources inside the region told Radio Free Asia.
Authorities in North Korea have ordered schools across the country to raise more rabbits to supply and feed its army or face punishment, sources told Radio Free Asia.
North Korean forces deployed in Russia’s Kursk region may soon be sent into annexed regions of Ukraine that remain fiercely contested by Russian and Ukrainian forces, a senior Ukrainian official said.
Some North Korean hospitals are posting prices for treatment and medicine in a break from past practice that suggests authorities are abandoning the goal of providing free health care, sources in the country have told Radio Free Asia.
The North Korean army is ordering soldiers to stop scrounging the streets for cigarette butts to smoke even as commanders keep some of the soldiers’ monthly cigarette rations for themselves, members of the country’s military told Radio Free Asia.
North Korea publicly executed three men — shooting each one with 90 rounds from a machine gun — for attempting to flee to democratic South Korea, a witness and a resident who heard about the execution told Radio Free Asia.
A North Korean soldier captured in Russia has given the first public account of conditions supporting Russian forces, struggling with a language barrier, inadequate support and Ukrainian drones on what he had been told was a training mission.