By Diplomacy Journal Lee Jon-young

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Jan. 11 that Ukrainian forces captured two North Korean soldiers during fighting in Russia's Kursk region.

Zelensky has said he is willing to release North Korean soldiers captured by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia in exchange for Ukrainian soldiers being held captive in Russia.

Zelensky made the announcement on his telegram, saying that the North Korean soldiers were taken to Kyiv, where they are being questioned by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU).

Zelensky said that the captured North Korean soldiers were wounded but are alive and receiving the necessary medical assistance. “North Korean soldiers often execute wounded soldiers to cover up their participation in combat,” he said, emphasizing that the capture was not easy, and thanking the 84th Tactical Group of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces and the airborne forces for their capture.

Security Service announcement and interrogation progress

The SBU also released an official statement, saying that the 84th Tactical Group captured one North Korean soldier on Jan. 9, and that the other was later captured by paratroopers. The SBU added that the men do not speak Ukrainian, English or Russian, and are being interrogated through interpreters in cooperation with South Korea's National Intelligence Service.

The agency called the incident “clear evidence of the involvement of the North Korean military in Russia's war against Ukraine,” and released some of the transcripts from the interrogations.

One of the captured soldiers was in possession of a military ID card with the name of a person from the Russian Federation's Tuva Republic. According to the Security Service, the document was issued last fall, when a North Korean military combat unit trained with Russian forces for about a week.

The identity and service history of the North Korean soldiers

According to the interrogation, one of the captured North Korean soldiers was born in 2005, began serving in the North Korean military in 2021 and was a rifleman. The other soldier was born in 1999 and has been in the military since 2016. Both were likely brought to the Ukrainian front through military cooperation with Russia.

The Ukrainian Security Service said that during interrogation, the North Korean soldiers claimed to have come to Ukraine for training purposes on Russian instructions.

“It is noteworthy that the North Korean soldiers emphasized that their purpose was training rather than combat, just as Russian troops did at the beginning of the conflict,” the Security Service noted.

Photos released and international reaction

Zelensky released photos of the two North Korean soldiers, along with the Russian military ID cards they were carrying. In the photos, the soldiers are shown sitting on bunk beds in a prison cell with bars, or drinking water with bandages covering their wounds.

This is the first time Ukraine has captured North Korean soldiers alive. It also captured a North Korean soldier in Kursk in late December of last year, but the soldier reportedly died within a day due to his severe injuries.

U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence officials estimate that about 11,000 North Korean troops are currently deployed in Russia's Kursk region. U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken said about 1,000 North Korean troops had been killed or wounded by the end of last month, while Zelensky claimed that as many as 4,000 had been killed or wounded.