According to a transcript published by North Korean state media KCNA, Kim declared that those who “unhesitatingly opted for self-blasting” and suicide attacks had shown the highest form of loyalty, a reference to soldiers throwing themselves on grenades or detonating explosives rather than risk being taken prisoner, News.Az reports, citing CNN.
Kim made the remarks at the opening of a vast new memorial complex on the outskirts of the capital, walking past rows of freshly laid graves before kneeling to place soil into an open burial site. Inside, bronze statuary and black marble walls etched with names surround displays of soldiers’ remains, personal relics and captured military equipment. The site, part cemetery and part museum, is the centerpiece of a broader campaign to frame the deaths of North Korean soldiers in Russia’s war on its neighbor as acts of heroism and patriotic sacrifice.
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For months, North Korean state media has offered vivid and often graphic accounts of how those soldiers died. Previous reporting has described troops detonating grenades as they were surrounded, shouting for comrades to stay back before triggering the blast, or killing themselves after being wounded to avoid capture. In one account, soldiers embraced each other before setting off explosives.For years, intelligence agencies, Ukrainian officials and defectors have reported that North Korean soldiers were expected to take their own lives rather than be captured. Pyongyang never confirmed it. Now the doctrine is being endorsed at the highest level, in public, at a site built to honor the war dead.
The memorial offers one of the clearest indications yet of the scale of North Korea’s involvement in Russia’s war. Analysis by NK News found that two black marble walls inside the complex list 2,288 names of soldiers believed to have died in combat, alongside 271 graves and more than 1,700 compartments for cremated remains. The complex has expanded walls and empty space for future graves, suggesting this is not a closed chapter.
South Korean and Western officials estimate more than 10,000 North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, with thousands killed or wounded, losses North Korea has not admitted so openly until now.
Unveiled on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s declaration of victory in Kursk, with senior Moscow officials in attendance and a message from President Vladimir Putin read aloud, the complex also displays captured military equipment, including what appear to be German Leopard tanks, American Abrams tanks and other NATO-origin systems, though analysts question whether North Korean forces obtained them directly.
A small number of North Korean soldiers are known to have been captured alive by Ukrainian forces. Some have said they did not know they would be sent into combat until shortly before deployment, and at least one expressed regret – not for being captured, but for failing to take his own life.
Their existence presents a problem for Pyongyang. Under international law, prisoners of war are typically repatriated at the end of hostilities. However, human rights advocates warn that returning them to North Korea could expose them to severe punishment. Officials in South Korea have said they would accept any soldiers who seek to defect, setting up a legal and diplomatic dilemma that could outlast the fighting itself.
