Drafted 24 November 2024 , updated 28 April 2025
To complete the picture, read: The thefts of butter and cheese highlight the cost of Russia’s war economy.
‘No one expected to return’: a former soldier reveals the dark reality of NK troops in Russia
“North Korea does not want a single soldier to return alive from the battlefield,” a defector with experience in North Korea’s army told Daily NK
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The Rodong Sinmun reported on 7 March that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had visited critical Korean People’s Army operational and training bases on the Western Front the previous day and toured the training facilities.
There were several reports of North Korean troops in Russia suffering casualties during clashes with Ukrainian troops. Some claim that North Korean troops in Russia are cannon fodder and that the North Korean authorities do not want them to return alive.
“There is a possibility that the soldiers currently deployed in Russia did not even know where they were headed until just before they left the country,” said a North Korean defector identified as Chung (a pseudonym) in a recent interview with Daily NK. Prior to his defection, Chung was a soldier who had been sent to Russia to work at a construction site.
“When North Korean soldiers are sent to work on construction sites in Russia, their missions abroad are referred to as ‘deployments’, not ‘assignments’ within the North Korean army. The soldiers themselves are not officially informed of their deployment location until shortly before departure,” Chung said.
Based on his personal experience, Chung said soldiers deployed in the war zone may have been chosen by the military, without having any say in the matter.
Chung said that even soldiers who are given work assignments in Russia are not selected by an official pool of volunteers within the army. Rather, the military leadership generally selects decorated soldiers with model records for such assignments.
Given this, Chung said, there is a good chance that soldiers currently deployed to the combat zone (and enlisted soldiers and non-commissioned officers in particular) are expected to go, whether they want to or not.
“All North Korean soldiers who are deployed overseas must commit to giving their lives in battle. They leave with the resolution to carry out the orders of their beloved comrade and supreme commander Kim Jong Un, regardless of the situation or circumstances,” Chung said.
In other words, even soldiers who are assigned to construction work in Russia must publicly pledge, before leaving the country, to follow the supreme leader’s orders, even if it means losing their lives on the battlefield.
The North Korean military demands this commitment from all soldiers who go abroad to ensure that they do not disobey orders or desert their post while abroad.
Defector expects soldiers in Ukraine to receive ‘meagre compensation’
Chung predicted that when North Korean soldiers are sent to war zones, the North Korean authorities will give them meagre compensation, without paying monthly salaries or special bonuses.
Although soldiers on work missions in Russia perform gruelling work for 10 or more hours a day, Chung said, their work is considered a substitute for military service. As such, they are paid only $100 per month, an extremely meagre subsistence allowance.
At a closed-door meeting of the National Intelligence Committee of the National Assembly on 29 October, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said that North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia for the invasion of Ukraine receive about $2,000 in monthly salary.
But Chung disputed that report. “It is ridiculous to say that soldiers deployed in a war zone receive $2,000 each. There is a huge difference between the payments made to mercenaries from South Korea’s perspective and the actual payments made to people serving in the military in North Korea,” he pointed out.
According to Chung, even elite troops trained in special forces risk becoming cannon fodder if they are actually sent to the battlefield.
“Although we are talking about elite special forces with the Storm Corps, all their training was done in mountainous areas, but the current fighting in Russia is taking place on wide plains. I doubt even the North Korean government expects much combat competence from the soldiers it is deploying to Russia,” he said.
“North Korea does not want a single soldier to return alive from the battlefield. The leadership will think that returning soldiers are not useful for maintaining the regime as they might tell others the truth about what they experienced, which would raise negativity about the regime,” Chung noted.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a number of North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia died in combat in Kursk at a press conference after the European Political Community summit he attended in Budapest, Hungary, on 7 November.
Zelenskyy said that unless appropriate measures are taken, he thinks even more North Korean troops will be sent to Russia.
Daily NK works with a network of sources in North Korea, China and elsewhere. For security reasons, their identities remain anonymous.The photograph depicts North Korean soldiers doing exercises. (Rodong Sinmun, News 1)
And finally on 27 April 2025, Russia finally admitted the presence of North Koreans in the ranks of its soldiers:
Ukraine: Vladimir Putin praises the ‘feat’ of North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region
