North Korean soldiers turning to suicide rather than face ‘human wave’ attacks in occupied Russian region

North Korean soldiers sent to aid Russia in its fight against Ukraine are dying in droves and some of them have even chosen suicide over surrender, according to officials.

More than 1,000 North Korean soldiers were killed fighting in the Kursk region this past week — almost 10% of its deployment to Russia — after generals ordered a “human wave” attack, virtually sending them to their deaths.

“It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses,” U.S. National Security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Friday.

“I hope they’re loading up their commanders with a bunch of body bags, because they’re clearly going to need it,” he added.

He said the North Korean troops, which are fighting mainly on foot, are “highly indoctrinated, pushing attacks even when it is clear that those attacks are futile.”

They are also facing water and supply shortages, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence agency.

Earlier this week, Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that preliminary data indicated that more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers were killed or wounded in the region.

“They have many losses. A great deal. And we can see that the Russian military and the North Korean enforcers have no interest in the survival of these Koreans at all,” Zelensky said in a social media post. “Everything is arranged in a way that makes it impossible for us to capture the Koreans as prisoners – their own people are executing them, there are such cases. And the Russians send them into assaults with minimal protection.”

He said Ukrainian forces took some North Korean soldiers prisoners but they were “severely wounded and it was not possible to save their lives.”

Zelensky put the onus on North Korea’s neighbors, particularly China, to step in and keep them from losing their lives in the bloody battles in Europe. “If China is sincere in its statements that the war should not escalate, it must exert appropriate pressure on Pyongyang,” he said.

Zelensky previously expressed concerns that North Korea would send more troops to help Russia following the casualties.

In October, Kyiv announced that North Korea had sent up to 12,000 troops to Russia to assist it in the nearly three-year war following its invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine seized about 380 square miles of the Kursk region of Russia in August but has lost about 40% of that territory since, amid a counterattack by Moscow that has also killed and wounded many Ukrainian fighters, according to reports.

Kirby said another security assistance package for Ukraine would likely be approved in the coming days.

Earlier this week, President Biden condemned Russia’s Christmas Day attacks, including on Ukraine’s energy system, and requested the Defense Department continue supplying weapons to Ukraine.

With Post wires