North Korea’s Death Trap in Kursk

January 20th, 2025

Boyana Nikolova

In the past few months, an estimated 11,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to Russia, contributing to a fatal battle over the city of Kursk. However, little was known about the orders they received and the conditions they faced, until now.

Newfound journal entries, written by North Korean soldiers previously having fought in Kursk, have been recovered months after they were first deployed to Russia. They all reveal an unfortunate truth about their country’s involvement in the war: North Korea’s strategy has been an all or nothing one. Soldiers are believed to be sent into the fighting with high expectations, to the point many are encouraged to give up their lives.

Diagrams, discovered within multiple journal entries, detail that the main tactic troops have to follow involves one soldier that must act as “bait.” In each of hundreds of units, these soldiers are then commanded to lure top-notch Ukrainian drones into their bases, giving up their lives in the process and endangering the others in their unit. The very structure of this set-up is intended to maximize the number of drones taken down, but other than that, only a negligible part of the battle is fought in person-to-person combat for these units.

Still, this overly stringent and life-threatening strategy has come at a cost. Of the roughly 11,000 North Koreans initially deployed, about 300 of those soldiers are already believed dead. This concerning data, along with descriptions of an already brutal conflict in Kursk, are only hurting North Korea’s credibility, especially in the long-run. It shows that because of its current policy, North Korea’s manpower in the region is being depleted extraordinarily fast. This not only implies that its forces could be wiped out as soon as early as this April, but also, due to no suggestion of redeployment happening, that Russia could lose a battle in its own territory and be forced into an even more defensive position.

The clock is already ticking for Russia and its allies, however. Soldiers aren’t just being killed by foreign drones; many are sacrificing themselves in other ways or are escaping the conflict altogether. In extreme cases, where units have been encircled by Ukrainian infantry, drones, or tanks, this has been most common. Video evidence points to many soldiers abandoning their teams in a desperate attempt to save their own lives, while some have resorted to taking their own lives before capture. The recent uncovered journal entries suggest that the latter is due to orders received by their government.

Although it’s difficult to predict when and how North Korea will reach its breaking point in contributing to the war, one thing is certain: their current strategy won’t be lasting long.