What do North Korean soldiers get from the war?

Mark O'Neill August 14, 2026 10:27

Kim Jong-un is sending tens of thousands more of his soldiers – perhaps up to 50,000 – to fight in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They have a 50 per cent chance of survival.

Citing intelligence reports, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on August 9 that up to 50,000 North Korean soldiers would be deployed in Russia. They are going because Russian President Vladimir Putin is running out of soldiers.

In the four and a half years of war, Russia has lost 1.44 million killed, wounded and missing. There are not enough new recruits to replace the dead. Everyone in Russia expects a mobilisation of several hundred thousand after the September 18-20 “election” for the national legislature and before the end of 2026.

In 2024, Kim sent about 14,000 soldiers to the western Russian region of Kursk, where they held the Russian drive back a major Ukrainian incursion. Moscow disguised them with Russian names and uniforms.

In February this year, South Korean intelligence said that about 6,000 of those 14,000 had been killed or injured. The casualties were so large that Kim had to admit he had sent them.

In February this year, in the Hawasong district of Pyongyang, he opened a housing project with 50 buildings for 2,500 families of those killed and injured in the war.

“We are repaying the young martyrs who died in the war,” he said at the opening ceremony. “We want to offer comfort and pride to the surviving relatives.”

Last week the official media showed photographs of a tubby, smiling Kim embracing disabled soldiers in wheelchairs. They showed no reaction.

They may be asking: “what did I and my comrades get out of the war?”

Ukraine is 7,200 kilometres from North Korea. On January 9, 1992, the two countries established diplomatic relations but did not set up an embassy in the other’s country. Commerce and personal exchanges between the two have been negligible, except for Ukrainian scientists and businessmen involved in Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

Ukraine has never attacked or threatened North Korea. During the Korean War of 1950-1953, it is likely that Ukrainians were among the thousands of Soviet airmen and advisors which Josef Stalin sent there to help the grandfather of Kim Jong-un.

Moscow has not published the number of Soviet dead and injured in the war. But it is likely that there were Ukrainians who died fighting for North Korea.

So why should North Korean soldiers wish to sacrifice their lives in fighting Ukrainians? That is probably the reason why those sent in 2024 were not told where they were going nor that they would be engaged in a real war.

The high casualty rate of more than 40 per cent was due to several factors. The North Koreans were fighting in a land and a terrain they had never seen nor prepared for; they had never encountered drone warfare; and they were serving with Russian officers who did not speak Korean and knew nothing about them. Many officers were racist toward Asians.

Worse, the soldiers were ordered that, if they were to be captured, they should take their own lives and shoot those who were surrendering. The only two North Koreans captured by the Ukrainians were too severely injured to trigger the grenades they were holding.

Kim confirmed this in a speech on April 29 this year in Pyongyang at a memorial honouring those who died. He was addressing Russian officials and bereaved families.

“It is not only the heroes who unhesitatingly chose the path of self-destruction and suicide to defend great honour, but also those who fell while charging at the forefront of assault battles,” the official KCNA quoted him as saying.

In moving to Pyongyang, the bereaved families get something for the death of their loved one. Living standards in the capital are the highest in North Korea. Residence there is reserved for those at the top of the country’s rigid caste system. There are three castes – Loyal, Wavering and Hostile. The best jobs, education, housing and food are reserved for those in the Loyal class.

Russian soldiers at the front who do not wish to fight have the options – difficult and dangerous -- of desertion or surrendering to the Ukrainians. For North Koreans, they are virtually impossible.

Putin can pretend that the thousands of his countrymen whom he is sending to their deaths “are fighting for their country”. That is a Kafkaesque truth.
For Kim, it is even worse. He too is sending thousands of his compatriots to certain death. But he cannot pretend that they are dying to defend their motherland 7,000 kilometres away.

Their death and the lifelong agony that brings for their families mean nothing to him, nor to Putin. Nor to his mentor Josef Stalin, to whom popular culture ascribes this quotation:

“The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.”

Mark O'Neill

A Hong Kong-based writer, teacher and speaker.