Families of North Korean troops captured in Russia 'will be executed,' former Pyongyang soldier

SEOUL -- A former sergeant in the North Korean military says that few of Pyongyang's soldiers have been captured fighting against Ukraine because they're told their families will be executed if they are caught alive.

"Most soldiers will kill themselves before they're killed by the enemy, it's the biggest shame to be captured," the former soldier, Ryu Seong-hyeon, told ABC News.

Ryu defected to South Korea in 2019, running across a minefield in the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas.

Pyongyang has deployed more than 12,000 soldiers to Russia to fight in the Ukraine war, according to US estimates, with experts claiming Russian forces have also used North Korean weapons.

An estimated 300 North Korean soldiers have died in the fighting, and over 2,700 have been wounded, Seoul's National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in a closed briefing in January.

South Korea's spy agency told journalists Thursday that an unknown number of additional North Korean soldiers have been sent to the frontlines in Russia's western Kursk region since early February, after a near month-long lull in fighting against Ukrainian troops, who launched a surprise offensive across the border last August.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in January that his forces had captured two North Korean soldiers, marking the first time that Ukraine had captured Pyongyang's troops alive.

In a nearly 3-minute video released by Ukraine following the capture of the two North Korean troops, one of the soldiers says he wants to remain in Ukraine when asked if he wishes to return home. The Korean translator asks, "Did you know you were fighting in a war against Ukraine?" The soldier shakes his head.

South Korean intelligence assessed that the two soldiers were with the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a key North Korean military intelligence agency.

"If the soldiers are captured and tell information to the enemy, their families will be punished, go to a political prison camp, or worse, they will be executed in front of the people," said another North Korean defector, Pak Yusung.

'They just die like a dog'

Pyongyang's soldiers have struggled to adapt to the modern battlefield, the North Korean defectors suggested, as videos released by the Ukrainian military appear to show North Korean soldiers being chased down by attack drones.

Ryu and Pak defected long before the fighting that's underway in Russia, but they said that, in their experience, most of the soldiers would not have seen a drone in their life.