- Ukrainian forces have fought against North Korean troops in Russia's Kursk region.
- A Ukrainian commander described to Business Insider what it was like to face them in combat.
- He said the North Koreans charged forward like something out of a movie and were "cannon fodder."
North Korean soldiers who fought in Russia were treated as "cannon fodder," a Ukrainian commander who went into battle against them told Business Insider.
Konoval Ihor Ihorovych, the commander of the reserve group of the 4th Company of the 33rd Assault Regiment, said North Korean behavior in battle was at times confusing and reminiscent of past wars. He said they appeared insufficiently trained for this war.
About 11,000 North Korean troops were deployed to Russia's western Kursk region in the fall to help Moscow repel enemy forces and recapture territory that Ukraine had seized after it launched a stunning invasion there in August.
Ihorovych, call sign Sahara, joined an operation in early January to take Makhnovka, a settlement in Kursk. The goal was to secure key positions and wait for reinforcements to arrive.
He recalled how, at one point, his soldiers came across North Korean troops who were inexplicably running back and forth between buildings while getting pounded by artillery fire about 500 meters away from the Ukrainians.
Ihorovych said he wasn't sure why the North Koreans were running. He speculated that they either didn't know what to do or that there was no commander on the ground with them. Even Ukrainian soldiers in an adjacent unit were surprised by their strange behavior.
The war in Ukraine is a very different kind of conflict compared with what North Korean forces have trained for, and they're suspected to have received only limited training from the Russians.
"In combat, they would just charge forward from the tree line, like in a World War II movie," Ihorovych recalled. Assaults during World War II often had high casualty rates. He said his troops killed several North Korean soldiers they saw running from their positions.
Ihorovych said his unit completed their operation without taking any losses, adding that the North Koreans were basically being used as "cannon fodder."
BI contacted the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, and the Ministry of Defense for comment on the observations of North Koreans in combat but didn't immediately receive a response. Ihorovych's description of their battle style, however, falls in line with an assessment from the Biden administration, which said at the end of December that the North Koreans were employing human wave tactics that weren't very effective.
A White House spokesperson said at the time that Russian and North Korean military leaders saw the troops as "expendable" and were sending them on "hopeless assaults" against Ukrainian defenses. Prior to their deployment to Russia, Pyongyang's military hadn't experienced major combat operations in decades.
The Pentagon and Ukraine's military leadership have described the North Koreans as well-disciplined, competent, and capable soldiers skilled in combat but new to modern warfare and unprepared for its challenges.
New Western intelligence assessments say Pyongyang is taking heavy losses — about 4,000 troops are estimated to have been killed or wounded fighting in Russia. Britain's defense ministry said last month that the high rate of North Korean losses in such a short period of time was negatively affecting the forces' ability to conduct combat operations in Kursk.
Conflict analysts at the Institute for the Study of War think tank warned in mid-January that if this trend continued, Pyongyang could lose all the troops it deployed in just a matter of weeks. North Korean forces, notably, haven't been seen on the front lines in weeks, fueling speculation they were pulled back amid the heavy losses.
Russia and North Korea have strengthened their defense ties during the Ukraine war and signed a pact over the summer that pledged military assistance if one country is attacked. In addition to soldiers, Pyongyang has also sent Moscow artillery shells and missiles.