COMMENTARY: 7,000 North Korean soldiers fallen for Putin — and two prisoners who want to go South

Introduction: an alliance written in Northern blood

The figures Pyongyang will never publish

More than 7,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded in the Kursk Oblast campaign between 2024 and 2025. This figure, confirmed by Ukrainian military intelligence and relayed by the Kyiv Independent and Channel News Asia, represents a massive haemorrhage for an army fighting on a theatre it had never known, for a patron it had never had. Kim Jong-un sent his men to die in the forests of Kursk, and Moscow used them as cannon fodder in the frontal assaults characteristic of current Russian tactics.

Two of those soldiers survived differently: captured in January 2025 by Ukrainian forces, they now find themselves at the centre of a diplomatic equation involving Kyiv, Seoul, and Pyongyang. What they have declared wanting — according to South Korean and Ukrainian diplomatic sources available as of July 1, 2026 — is to go to South Korea. What they will actually obtain remains to be determined. What their presence says about this war is already devastating.

The Kursk campaign: Northern soldiers on Russian soil

A confirmed presence, a documented scale

The deployment of North Korean troops in Russia was officially confirmed by Ukrainian, American, and South Korean military intelligence during 2024. The first units were identified in the Kursk region during Ukraine's summer 2024 incursion, which had temporarily brought part of Russian territory under Ukrainian control. The North Korean soldiers were engaged in the Russian counter-offensives aimed at retaking that territory.

The documented losses of 7,000 killed or wounded cover approximately one year of intense fighting. This figure, from Ukrainian military intelligence, had not been independently confirmed by third-party sources as of July 1, 2026. Pyongyang has never officially acknowledged sending soldiers to Russia. North Korea maintains that its relationship with Moscow is technical and economic in nature — a claim contradicted by the two prisoners currently in Ukraine's hands.

The two prisoners: witnesses to a secret alliance

Captured in January 2025, a diplomatic stake in July 2026

The two North Korean soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces in January 2025 represent a case without precedent in the recent history of armed conflict. They are the living, nameable, interrogable proof of the North Korean military presence in Russia. Their testimonies, extracts of which have been made public by Ukrainian authorities, detail the conditions of their deployment, their training in Russia, and the instructions they received.

According to South Korean diplomatic sources cited by the Korea JoongAng Daily during the visit of Ukraine's Foreign Minister to Seoul on June 30, 2026, the two men have expressed a wish to be transferred to South Korea. This wish, if genuine, is politically explosive: it would transform prisoners of war into asylum seekers from a regime allied with Russia. Pyongyang had not reacted publicly to this information as of July 1, 2026.

Sybiha in Seoul: a historic diplomatic visit

Ukraine's first foreign minister in South Korea in eleven years

On June 30, 2026, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha made an official visit to Seoul — the first by a Ukrainian head of diplomacy to South Korea in eleven years. He met with his South Korean counterpart Cho Hyun. The discussions were described as "constructive" in official statements from both sides, the standard diplomatic formulation that leaves open the question of what was actually agreed.

Both governments indicated they had agreed to seek a solution to the transfer of the prisoners in accordance with their "free will" and international humanitarian law. This formulation does not constitute a concrete agreement. It signals a shared intention to resolve the issue, but no schedule, no modalities were publicly announced. Seoul wants the transfer as soon as possible. Kyiv is "weighing domestic public opinion," according to sources cited by the Korea JoongAng Daily.

Panmunjom: the symbol of a connected war

The demilitarised zone as seen from Kyiv

During his visit to Seoul, Andrii Sybiha travelled to Panmunjom, the demilitarised zone that has separated the two Koreas since the 1953 armistice. Before the cameras, he delivered a phrase that captures the geopolitical connection between the two conflicts: "This historic line is now physically linked to our own front lines." He was referring to the fact that soldiers trained behind this line are now fighting — and dying — in the forests of Kursk.

This statement is not merely symbolic. It aims to solidify cooperation between Seoul and Kyiv across several registers: intelligence sharing on North Korean military tactics, diplomatic cooperation at the United Nations and in international forums, and potentially the supply of South Korean military equipment to Ukraine — a subject on which Seoul remains cautious but no longer closes the door as firmly as it did in 2022.

What North Korea says — in silence

The absence of reaction as an answer

The official reaction of Pyongyang to Sybiha's visit to Seoul, to the casualty figures published by Ukraine, and to the declarations on the prisoners: total silence. North Korea's official news agency KCNA published nothing on these developments as of July 1, 2026. That is itself an answer — and it is the expected answer from a regime that has built its stability on the capacity to control internal information.

This silence protects Kim Jong-un in several ways. It avoids having to explain to the North Korean population why soldiers are dying in a foreign country. It avoids the diplomatic embarrassment of a public disagreement with Moscow over the losses. And it maintains the plausible deniability that Pyongyang uses in international forums — notably at the UN Security Council, where Russia blocks any binding resolution on the issue.

The strategic impact: what this alliance changes

The war as a North Korean military laboratory

Beyond the human figures, the North Korean deployment in Russia has a strategic value that military analysts are beginning to document. Kim Jong-un's soldiers have acquired real combat experience — under high-intensity warfare conditions, with drones, modern artillery, electronic warfare systems — that no exercise can replicate. This experience now resides in the minds of survivors. It will be integrated into North Korean military doctrine.

For South Korea, this operational skills transfer constitutes a direct threat. For Taiwan and Japan, it confirms that the Russia-North Korea coalition is not symbolic — it is militarily operational and being strengthened. American and South Korean intelligence services are analysing the survivors not only for what they say about the war in Ukraine, but for what they reveal about Pyongyang's future capabilities.

The prisoner case: law, diplomacy and precedent

What international humanitarian law provides

The fate of the two captured North Korean soldiers is governed by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war. In theory, they must be treated with dignity, protected from pressure to reveal information beyond their identity, and repatriated after the cessation of hostilities. In practice, their status is unprecedented: they are citizens of a state not officially at war with Ukraine, sent by a regime that denies their presence.

The two men's request to go to South Korea creates a diplomatic precedent without clear guidance. International law does not explicitly provide for the case of soldiers clandestinely sent into a conflict by a third-party state not party to the conflict. Ukraine and South Korea are therefore navigating partially uncharted legal territory, where humanitarian law principles must be reconciled with the geopolitical realities of the Korean peninsula.

The precedent and its implications for North Korea

If the two prisoners are indeed transferred to South Korea, the established precedent will be immense. It would be the first time a North Korean soldier, sent in secret to fight in a foreign conflict, officially arrives in a state that Pyongyang considers its existential enemy. The revelations they could make — on command structures, agreements with Moscow, deployment conditions — would be of extraordinary intelligence value.

For Kim Jong-un, this transfer would represent an unprecedented public humiliation in decades. This is no doubt why Kyiv is "weighing domestic public opinion" before acting: the decision to transfer these two men will have consequences in multiple simultaneous directions, and none of them is trivial. The equation is complex, and both capitals know it.

Conclusion: the price of a monstrous alliance

7,000 names no one will officially pronounce

These 7,000 North Korean soldiers killed or wounded at Kursk are the concrete reflection of what the war in Ukraine has become: a conflict where the lines between local and global, between regional and strategic, have been erased. Putin recruited the armies of a totalitarian state to compensate for his own losses. Kim Jong-un sold the blood of his men in exchange for technology and regime stability. This deal was struck in secret — but the evidence is accumulating.

The two prisoners who want to go to South Korea are, in this context, far more than two individual cases. They are the thread, when pulled, that could reveal part of the hidden architecture of this alliance. The governments of Seoul and Kyiv — who met on June 30, 2026 for the first time in eleven years at foreign minister level — have every interest in managing this file with intelligence, not just compassion. Every detail these two men hold is a piece of a geopolitical puzzle the entire world needs to see complete.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Sources and limits

The figures of 7,000 killed or wounded come from Ukrainian military intelligence relayed by the Kyiv Independent and Channel News Asia. These figures had not been independently verified as of July 1, 2026 — they represent the official Ukrainian assessment, not a count verified by neutral observers. Information on Sybiha's visit to Seoul on June 30, 2026 comes from the Korea JoongAng Daily and the Anadolu Agency. The declaration on the prisoners' wish to go to South Korea is drawn from diplomatic sources cited in those same articles — it is not confirmed by a direct statement from the two men in the sources consulted.

Editorial positioning

I consider the deployment of North Korean soldiers to fight in Russia to be a serious violation of international humanitarian law and a direct threat to regional security in East Asia and Europe. This position is based on Security Council resolutions concerning North Korea and on the legal definition of a state's participation in a third-party armed conflict. I do not claim a neutrality that does not exist when regimes use their soldiers as consumable resources.

Sources

Primary sources

Channel News Asia — More than 7,000 North Korean soldiers killed or wounded in the Kursk campaign — 2025–2026

Korea JoongAng Daily — Ukraine's top envoy makes rare visit to Seoul, but no movement on North Korean POW transfer — June 30, 2026

Anadolu Agency — South Korea, Ukraine discuss transfer of captured North Korean soldiers — June 30, 2026

Secondary sources

Kyiv Independent — Ukraine reveals new figures for North Korean troop losses in Russia's Kursk Oblast

EuroMaidan Press — Ongoing coverage of North Korean military presence in Russia — 2025–2026

Kyiv Post — Analyses and reports on the strategic implications of North Korean deployment — 2026