Janis Mackey Frayer, Stella Kim and Jennifer Jett
Few people understand what may be going through the minds of North Korean soldiers fighting and dying for Russia in the war against Ukraine. But Lee Chul Eun is one of them.
Lee, 38, a North Korean defector and former soldier now living in South Korea, said it is “devastating” to see troops from the reclusive, communist-ruled North being sent abroad by leader Kim Jong Un, “only to then give up their youth for a land that is not even theirs but the foreign land of Russia.”
He is one of multiple defectors who spoke to NBC News about the training, conditions and mindset of North Korean soldiers, including their willingness to take their own lives if necessary.
Lee said his former colleagues “are essentially just sent out to be cannon fodder on the front lines.”
For the first time since they arrived in Russia in the fall, North Korean soldiers have been captured alive by Ukrainian forces, with video and photos showing one man with bandages around his jawline and another with bandaged hands.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who announced the prisoners’ apprehension earlier this month, said they were living proof that North Korea had entered the war, in a major escalation of the yearslong conflict.
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