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Ukrainian forces have apprehended an injured North Korean soldier, deployed to assist Russia in its conflict, South Korea’s intelligence agency confirmed on Friday.
This individual is reportedly the first North Korean prisoner of war captured since December, when Pyongyang began sending troops to support Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.
Confirmation of this capture follows the circulation of a photograph on Telegram, allegedly depicting the wounded soldier.
According to sources in Kyiv and Seoul, North Korea has dispatched over 10,000 soldiers to aid Russia, although Moscow and Pyongyang have neither confirmed nor denied these claims.
Yang Uk, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, according to the BBC, sat that this marks the beginning of a series of captures and fatalities.
“For Ukrainians, it’s more beneficial to capture these North Korean troops and try to exchange them with Russians for Ukrainian prisoners of war,” he added.
Recent visual evidence from the Russia-Ukraine conflict has bolstered suspicions that North Korean troops are being deployed in significant numbers under Russian command, Mr. Yang noted. However, he cautioned that verifying their North Korean nationality may prove challenging.
Ukrainian forces allege that North Korean soldiers have been provided with counterfeit Russian identification documents. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared footage last week purportedly showing Russian troops burning the faces of deceased North Koreans to obscure their identities.
Intelligence services from Ukraine and South Korea have indicated that many of the deployed troops are elite members of Pyongyang’s 11th Corps, also known as the Storm Corps, which specialised in infiltration, infrastructure sabotage, and assassination.
President Zelensky reported on Monday that over 3,000 North Korean soldiers have either been killed or wounded while fighting in Russia’s Kursk region. He further stated that the collaboration between Moscow and Pyongyang increases the “risk of destabilisation” around the Korean peninsula.
Russia initiated a comprehensive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The recent involvement of North Korean troops underscores a strengthening alliance between the two isolated states. This development, occurring amid escalating tensions between North Korea and South Korea, has raised concerns in the West. China, a long-time ally of both nations, is also monitoring the situation closely.
Frances Ibiefo
– Arise News.
