Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was ready to return the North Korean soldiers that his forces allegedly captured last week if Kim Jong Un could facilitate their exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
“Ukraine is ready to hand over Kim Jong Un’s soldiers to him if he can organise their exchange for our warriors who are being held captive in Russia,” Mr Zelensky said on Sunday.
“In addition to the first captured soldiers from North Korea, there will undoubtedly be more. It’s only a matter of time before our troops manage to capture others.”
The Ukrainian leader claimed on Saturday that his troops had captured two North Korean soldiers from Russia’s Kursk region. He posted a short video showing one of them lying in a bed with bandaged hands and the other sitting with a bandage around his jaw.
One of them purportedly said during interrogation he had been told he was on a training exercise and did not know he was fighting Ukrainian troops.
The soldier claimed to have hid in a shelter during fighting before being found a few days later. They had suffered significant losses and food and water shortages for several days before their capture, he purportedly said.
“One of them expressed a desire to stay in Ukraine, the other to return to Korea,” Mr Zelensky said in a televised statement about the captured soldiers.
He said any captured North Koreans “who express a desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korean language will be given that opportunity”.
One of the prisoners carried a Russian military ID card that Mr Zelensky claimed was “issued in the name of another person”. The Ukrainian intelligence agency SBU showed an ID card issued to a 26-year-old man from Russia’s Tyva region bordering Mongolia.
The other soldier carried no papers.
North Korean authorities called for the country’s troops to “self destruct” to evade capture, according to Lee Seong-kweun, a lawmaker on the South Korean parliament intelligence committee, who cited the South Korean National Intelligence Service.
“It was also found in the memos carried by those killed that North Korean authorities emphasised self-destruction and suicide before capture, and that soldiers vaguely expect to join the Workers’ Party (of North Korea) or be pardoned,” Mr Lee said, citing the intelligence agency’s findings.
Captured North Korean soldiers had not shown an intention to come to South Korea, though South Korea would cooperate with Ukraine if there was a request, Yonhap news agency reported, citing NIS.
The agency said the captive North Korea soldiers haven’t expressed a desire to defect or requested to resettle in South Korea, according to two lawmakers who attended the meeting.
Ukraine, South Korea and the US claim that Pyongyang has deployed nearly 11,000 soldiers to help the Russian military fight off the Ukrainian incursion of the Kursh border region which began last August.
Russia and North Korea have neither confirmed nor denied the allegations.
