North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korean soldiers’ testimony from Ukraine and Kim Jong Un’s development push

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Ukraine released the first testimony from North Korean soldiers captured fighting for Russia in the Kursk region on Saturday, providing the latest evidence of the DPRK’s involvement in the war. NK News Senior Analytic Correspondent Colin Zwirko joins the podcast to discuss the footage and photos of the two soldiers released by the Ukrainian government […]

Explore the unofficial world of DPRK-inspired apparel at NK News Shop. Dive into a captivating collection of North Korea-themed t-shirts, hoodies and more at the NK News Shop. From the popular Daedonggang beer t-shirts to the adventurous air-cordior designs, each and the world. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jacko Zwedzic. And today it is Tuesday, the 14th of January 2025. And I'm joined here in the studio for the first time this year by Colin Zwirko. Colin, welcome back on the show. Good morning, Jacko. Good morning. Okay, so let's talk about let's start with the

hot topic that everyone's talking about it seems that finally, we have some what seems to be verifiable footage of of North Korean prisoners of war who were captured in the Kursk region of Russia by Ukrainian forces. Right. Two guys were reportedly captured by Ukraine on Russian territory, which Ukraine is occupying, or I don't know about the exact place where they were picked up. And yeah, they were injured. One had a bad jaw injury, the other had some hand injuries, and Ukraine is showing them off to the media,

and Zelensky is requesting that North Korea acknowledge this and start discussing about how Kim Jong-un can help arrange to get some Ukrainians back from Russia in exchange for these two North Koreans. Right, right. He was hoping for a kind of an ersatz swap. I mean, obviously, North Korea is not holding any Ukrainian soldiers as far as we know, so he's hoping that pressure on North Korea will help Russia will push Russia to to give some Ukrainian soldiers back. Knowing what we know about North Korea, do you suspect

that this is the sort of thing that will make North Korea suddenly say, Okay, yeah, we do have forces in Russia? I don't think so. No. Of course, there's a lot of unknowns about everything happening with regarding North Korean soldiers in Russia. But there have been reports that they found journals on them. They found documents on some of the dead soldiers. The assumption at this point is that soldiers are being ordered not to be captured. So that means kill each other or kill themselves in order to not be captured. And so and also trying as best as they can with the help of the Russians together to block any

knowledge of this truth from coming out even though it's quite obvious at this point that North Korean soldiers are in Russia. Right, they're given these ID documents that are for Russian citizens with fake Russian names etc. Yeah. And some of the footage, so we've seen footage of them talking. We've also seen some footage of possibly different North Koreans trying to escape from drones by hiding inside a local family's house. And it seems like drones are playing a big part in attacking these North Korean soldiers,

either in hunting them and capturing them or in killing them. But there's also an ethical issue really here, isn't there, about around the showing of the faces of these soldiers? Right. So as soon as they were captured, pretty much immediately, Ukraine is promoting them and showing their faces and inviting journalists to come talk with them, interview them or whatever. And this is, I think you have it pulled up, right? Yes. So in the Geneva convention, there are a couple of provisions that are germane here. One of them is article 13, which I'm not quoting directly, but it has a summary

there that it's talking about the publication of photographs of videos that expose prisoners of war to public curiosity or humiliation, such as images showing them in a vulnerable or degrading state. This is prohibited by the Geneva Convention. Similarly, any public display that could compromise their dignity or personal honor, including the unauthorized publication of photos, would violate the Geneva Convention Article 14. So that complicates things, but it's always going to be complicated because both North Korea and Russia are not open about the deployment of North Korean forces there, right?

So in order to prove it, at some point, you're going to have to show somebody. But of course, there is the argument that you could have blurred the faces, so anonymized the faces, but allowed voices to be heard or something like that. So you could still use that as evidence, but without actually showing who they are. And what could be some of the ramifications for their families back home, do you think? Well, there is a general education that everyone gets on the topic of North Korea, which is you always have to be careful when showing North Koreans who are either defectors or even if they're inside North Korea, you always have to be wary of the overarching fact that the North Korean government is pretty brutal to the North Korean people and so they will potentially punish the family members, which is something historically we know is true from a lot of

testimonials that family members can be punished for the perceived crimes of one of their family members. So the idea here is that the North Koreans who were captured, the North Korean government sees the videos coming out from the Ukrainian government, and then these family members could be hidden away, punished, something like that. Sent to a farm, sent to a mine, sent to a reeducation center. And so these are kind of like the understood, I don't know, tropes about,

about how North Korea works. I don't think it's always true. There is not, I don't think there's any kind of automatic punishment for someone like this in this situation. I think we really have to be careful. It's hard to give the benefit of the doubt to the North Korean government, but I don't think that these families are going to automatically be punished, but it's possible. And yeah, and so looking at it from the

Ukrainian perspective, if everyone comes out pointing to the Geneva Conventions immediately, I just don't think and we can see obviously that the Ukrainian government is not as concerned with that as they are about pushing the trying to convince more people in the world that North Korea is involved in this war because Number one thing here is that North Korea secretly participating in this war either at the request of Kim Jong-un or at the request of Putin we don't know and Ukraine is threatened by this and needs more countries in the world to see that North Korea is thousands

of miles away with their missiles, with their troops, and we need help. And so they're trying first and foremost to prove it and prove it and prove it, even though I think us at NK News, we're well aware the truth that North Korean soldiers are there, but some supporters of Ukraine maybe aren't. I don't know. Right. I found it interesting that in the videos that we saw, at least supporters of Ukraine maybe aren't I don't know right? I found it interesting that in the in the videos that we saw What at least one of the men seemed to say that he did not know that he was going to be sent to fight on a

Foreign battlefield, you know, he had the idea that he was going for training Yeah, that mirrors what we saw at the beginning of the war when Russia first invaded Ukraine, right? And in February 2022 that yet some soldiers felt that they were just doing some training in what, Belarus or whatever, and then suddenly they're over the border. Yeah, Russian soldiers were being sent to war, supposedly thinking they were being sent to training. So I would believe that this is possible,

obviously not once they got certain distance away from home, I'm sure they understood, but yeah. Yeah, so this is certainly not a finished story. This is certainly ongoing. One of those soldiers has also possibly expressed, but you know, I think that would have to be said multiple times, but possibly expressed a desire to not go back to North Korea. So we'll see. I don't know that I think that's, that's gonna be, that's going to

be laundered a bit in news articles, but if you just watch the video, which is all we have to go on, actually I don't know if maybe there were other claims separate to the video that maybe Ukraine got from a later interview, I don't know, but the video itself is just the soldier kind of dazedly answering questions and leading questions, you know, do you wanna stay here?

And he's like, yeah, and then they're like, but do you wanna go home? And he's like, yeah. So I mean, if you think about if you're in that situation, you want to see your family, you're on soldier, what do you know about geopolitics and and the punishment? I don't know, you want to see your family? So yeah, exactly. So yeah, for this to be, you know, a dispositive statement, it would have to be repeated in a number of ways after he was in a better state physically and mentally than in a hospital bed. So we'll see what becomes of that. Now you've done a recent story some analysis into related issues so tell us about that. Yeah I wrote a piece on NK News last week that was just exploring this bigger question of what Kim Jong-un is supposed to do, what he wants to do, what he should do about soldiers dying in Russia in the war against Ukraine, because his war is a secret.

And his war is a secret at home. It's never been published in state media. We don't know if it's being talked about in internal education, internal media, like internal propaganda directives, but as long as he keeps the war secret, he cannot honor the soldiers that are dying in Ukraine, or in the war against Ukraine. Yeah, so caskets and body bags coming home on a plane, that would be a dead giveaway, if you'll pardon the unfortunate pun there, that there's something going on here. Yeah, Kim Jong-un has built an image of being a true champion of the martyrs, as he calls them. Mostly Korean war fighters, but then pretty much anyone who is a good patriot gets called a martyr once they die, even if they're just a politician or an economist. So the

fact that he has all these soldiers dying over there, which we don't know the number exactly, and my colleague Anton was talking about known ratios of, when you talk about casualties, what is usually the ratio of dead to injured. And right now the number being thrown out, I think yesterday was 300 dead and 2,700 injured. And I think that might not be in line with typical ratios.

I don't know, but we don't know the exact number of dead. But if it's in the hundreds, that's a lot of families that you have to tell a story. So there was a bunch of questions there. What story does he tell them? Does he lie or does he tell them the truth and use coercion and benefits to keep them quiet. So it was interesting to game this all out and what his options are and what's he going

to do if the number of dead goes into the thousands? I think he has to take the war public at some point. Right. And if there were, for example, if all the dead bodies were brought back in caskets, that's a lot of space on cargo planes or on trains, it's a lot of resources to move them. So do you simply have them, you know, cremated and send them back in some urns or just don't send anything back and maybe just a dog tag and a thank you letter to the family? I don't know. Yeah, it's very dark and sad.

This conversation, if it does go public, though,, of course it will eventually end up in North Korean media and we'll know about it, right? Whether families are receiving a, you know, your father died a martyr's death on... I don't know, they could continue to keep it secret. They could have public ceremonies or, you know, not totally secret ceremonies, but then just not report about it, try to keep a lid on it. But the, the, the, the fact is that you've got. Soldiers bewildered out there potentially thinking they're not trying to fight a war dying in a war. Families who have to be given a story.

I mean, it's a mess. If you, it's hard to even organize this topic here on the podcast. How do you, how do you think Kim Jong-un is doing it? And we know that his biggest concern in recent years is keeping his power, maintaining his power, making sure people are loyal, obedient, obeying directions from the party. And this throws a wrench into all that, I think. Controlling flows of information

from the outside world, right? And yeah, this is definitely part of, a war has always got the two parts. It's the fighting on the battlefield. It's also the narrative you're telling people back home. And that's the- Yeah. And on that point, I guess,

it's useful to look at other countries. You don't have to be a master of totalitarian propaganda to sell a story at home. And they've set up a lot of it back in North Korea about Russian friendship, about patriotism, about fighting the US together. You know, whenever the US was off on foreign wars far away, they were not usually secret about it and there were families of thousands of young men dying.

And there were protests, but you know, it didn't threaten the, you know, total upheaval unless we're talking about Vietnam. It's not unheard of that Kim could go public with this and keep a lid on anger of families. And Kim could potentially, and here I'm just speculating, but Kim could take a leaf out of the Russian playbook and sort of learn how did Russia tell the narrative about Russian soldiers dying in Syria or in, Right.

On battlefield in Africa. Even right now, what's Russia telling us or in, you know, on battlefields. Even right now, what's Russia telling us? Yeah, that too. Gosh, yeah. It's public about it's many more young men dying in Ukraine. So, yeah, that's why I'm still perplexed about why this war is secret in North Korea. Is it Putin? I don't know. It is a question that will continue to dominate our thoughts for a while. Now, in the last couple of minutes we've got left, let's talk about the big construction project.

It's a multi-year plan. The 1020 project, is that the name? The 20 times 10 project. I don't know how it's spoken in English, to be honest, but I guess we'll call it the 20 times 10 project. And the name comes from? This is like a propaganda buzzword that North Korea is using that Kim Jong-un kicked off last year. 20 cities or counties are chosen for per year,

and they each have to build a cluster of the two to three light industry factories, like making soft drinks and soap. And then starting this year, so last year was the first year, and they have to do this for 10 years, which will result in 200 plus counties and cities being Quote unquote totally transformed from their quote unquote backwards failing economies. This is all Kim Jong-un's word So it's a very interesting topic. So it's modernizing its industrializing. It's hopefully electrifying because that's also yeah it will be the factories plus a hospital or like a clinic, a cultural center, which is like barber shop

and a small movie theater or something, and then a grain management center. So Kim Jong-un bills this as transforming the entire country saying I failed, my predecessors failed, there's poverty, wealth inequality, the whole country basically. Oh, these are his words? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay., totally Kim Jung-un's words

Very interesting Peter Ward has written some very interesting Analyses on on this and so the first year finished and what I'm looking at right now is like a couple factories in 20-towns last year they're built. They're making soft drinks imported Chinese machinery. It's strange, they're making like bread snacks, but they're rolling out the dough by hand, weighing it by hand on scales. The drinks all have different levels of liquid inside.

He's got some quality issues for sure, and it's very small scale. It's like serving a small community just in that town seemingly. Some some self sustainment goal, but there's a long way to go for this to actually convince North Koreans that their, their backward rural economy that Kim Jong-un opened up about is actually transforming. Well, last question, but one of the one of the things that pops

up in my mind is, what about the electrical grid? That's been a problem for, you you know for decades How can you transform cities and build factories and grain management centers and whatnot without? fixing the electrical problems I'm not an expert on this but they are kind of in the background still working on some power plants here and there every year Has a number of new power plants that they'll inaugurate. It's always, yeah, they're always saying there's an electricity problem that we need to solve. But it's not just the power plant, it's the grid that comes from the power plant, right? So are they rolling out new power lines and power transmission

systems, and substations and transformers and all that? Maybe you're hitting on an interesting point here because that is not part of the rhetoric on the project. So maybe it's all about propaganda. It's pitching to the people a project which they can see and believe is helping them, which is going to in turn help Kim Jong-un's power base. But maybe they're doing that in the background and I have to investigate state media a little more closely,

but it's not in Kim's speech, it's not in the main pitch. So maybe that's a sign that they're not that serious and I can already see signs that this is not, well anyway, it's a very expensive project. And it's going on for 10 years, right? Yeah, so it's 20 per year and that's two to three factories. So yeah, we're talking like 60 plus factories per year, 20 hospitals, 20 grain management. I mean, it's just a lot to build. And so we'll be watching it. It's

not going to be possible to judge the success very fast. It's going to be a big, a long project and maybe that works to chems benefit. People aren't going to be possible to judge the success very fast. It's going to be a big, a long project and maybe that works to chems benefit. People aren't going to be able to judge them immediately. So, okay. Well, we've gone over time. So we're going to have to pitch this to the people. Thank you very much, Collins, worker for coming on the NK news podcast today. Thanks, Jacko. In the intricate world of Korean affairs, tailored intelligence makes all the difference. Korea Risk Group's consulting services offer specialized, actionable intelligence designed to guide your career-related decisions. We provide bespoke consulting services that cater to your unique challenges and goals. From policy analysis to market entry strategies, we bring clarity to complexity.

Transform uncertainty into opportunity and visit careerpro.com solutions today. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer genius, Gabby Magnuson, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions and fixes the audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time. Music