The Ukrainian project “I Want to Live” on Oct. 23 called on North Korean soldiers to surrender to Ukrainian forces in a new Korean-language video.
Launched in September 2022 by Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, the 24-hour “I Want to Live” hotline helps Russian soldiers willingly surrender themselves or their units to the Ukrainian army.
The Russian military is promised that after surrender, they will be held in compliance with the Geneva Conventions.
“You must not die senselessly in a foreign land. You must not repeat the fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home!” the Korean-language statement reads.
“No matter how many soldiers Pyongyang sends to help Russia, no matter the destination – Ukrainian POW camps are ready to receive soldiers of any nationality, religion, and ideological views.”
In the statement, the North Korean military is guaranteed safe conditions of detention, food, and medical care by the Ukrainian side.
John Foreman CBE, the U.K.’s former defense attache in Moscow from 2019 to 2022, told the Kyiv Independent that Ukrainian efforts might help the North Koreans to desert. The North Korean soldiers will also know that the treatment by the Ukrainians will be “much more humane ” than treatment by their own side and by the Russians, Foreman added.
Foreman assumed that North Korea had probably anticipated this by holding the families of the soldiers, if not hostage, but setting out the consequences of desertion on their families.
“(North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un has absolutely no compunction in killing his own people, starving them, assassinating his political opponents, anybody he’s seen as disloyal. So, I think that holding that sword of Damocles over the heads of the families of the soldiers of North Korea would be one way of keeping their loyalty,” Foreman said.
Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defense pact during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June. As part of the agreement, the North Korean military announced that an engineering unit would join Russian forces on the ground in Donetsk Oblast the following month.
The secret clause reportedly allowed North Korea to send the first 1,000 of its soldiers to Ukraine to gain military experience. More North Korean troops are expected to be engaged, the source told the WSJ.
Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, previously revealed that close to 11,000 North Korean troops are already in Russia and will be ready to fight by Nov. 1.