A captured North Korean soldier attempted to hit his head against a post and later requested to watch romantic movies, according to the DSHV.

The account of the soldiers is provided by the press service of the Air Assault Forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

According to them, once after the North Korean troops completed their assaults on Ukrainian positions, a drone operator noticed a body moving on the battlefield.

The military went to investigate who it could be. At first, one of the paratroopers says, they thought it was a Ukrainian soldier.

“As we got closer, we saw narrow eyes, noticed that the uniform wasn’t ours, the armor wasn’t ours. He didn’t respond to Russian, English, or Ukrainian,” said the serviceman.

They found a weapon with the North Korean soldier—a grenade and a knife—as well as a sausage he had brought with him to eat. When he was taken to the place where he was supposed to be picked up, he stopped being calm—according to the paratroopers, they had to force him out of the trench.

“We were leading him to the road. […] There, under the road, there were concrete posts, and he […] ran headfirst into a post. […] He didn’t fall on his stomach as he hit, but turned over onto his back. I think he did that on purpose to fake it so that we would approach him; he could have snatched a weapon from us and done something to us,” say the Ukrainian soldiers.

Later, they learned from their comrades that the captive was “treated well,” given assistance, and fed, and he himself, according to them, requested to “watch romantic movies.”

The First North Korean Soldiers in Captivity

On January 11, it became known that Ukrainian fighters captured the first two soldiers from North Korea in the Kursk region of Russia. They were injured but survived. They were taken to Kyiv, where investigators from the Security Service of Ukraine are communicating with them.

The captives do not speak Ukrainian, English, or Russian, so communication with them is conducted through Korean translators in cooperation with South Korean intelligence. Both stated that they were going for training, not to fight against Ukraine.

After that, Ukraine announced that it is prepared to return North Korea's soldiers if the country helps organize an exchange for Ukrainian fighters held by Russia.