North Korean soldier captured in Ukraine war dies: South Korea’s spy agency
Al Jazeera
Intelligence report comes days after Ukraine’s president said nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been ‘killed or wounded’ in combat.
A North Korean soldier, who was fighting for Russia, has died in Ukrainian captivity due to severe wounds, according to South Korea’s spy agency.
The announcement by the National Intelligence Service in Seoul came on Friday, hours after the Yonhap news agency cited the agency as confirming for the first time that Ukrainian forces had captured a North Korean soldier. The report said he was alive, though the location where he was seized was not known.
Pyongyang has deployed thousands of troops to reinforce Russia’s military, in particular to the Kursk border region where Ukraine mounted a shock border incursion in August.
Confirmation of the soldier’s death came days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that nearly 3,000 North Korean soldiers had been “killed or wounded” so far as they joined Russian troops in combat.
It marked the first significant estimate by Ukraine of North Korean casualties several weeks after Kyiv announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war.
