North Korea’s ill-prepared troops, deployed to support Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine, are suffering significant casualties, including about 1,000 deaths and injuries during one week in late December 2024.
The mass casualty estimates, provided by the United States National Security Advisor’s office and the U.S. Department of Defense, appear to confirm analysts’ predictions that North Korean troops would be “cannon fodder” during fighting in Russia’s Kursk region. The North Korean soldiers are being sent against heavily fortified positions without proper planning, coordination or equipment.
Video released by Ukrainian Special Operations Forces shows North Korean troops attempting to advance on foot, rather than in armored vehicles, with no support from tanks or artillery. They dispersed in panic as attack drones approached.
“These human wave tactics that we’re seeing haven’t really been all that effective,” U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in late December. “It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses.”
The North Korean troops are part of the Storm Corps, special forces considered among the regime’s best trained and most heavily indoctrinated, but they are still unprepared for drone attacks and unfamiliar with the terrain, The New York Times newspaper reported. They have no combat experience and many appear to be malnourished.
