North Korean soldiers prepared for a different war: That is why they die so ignominiously in Kursk

There are about 11,000 North Korean soldiers fighting on Russia's side, who belong to an elite special forces unit. But they are suffering heavy losses due to their lack of readiness for the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, The New York Times writes .

According to South Korea's National Intelligence Service, the troops North Korea deployed to the Kursk region belong to the Storm Special Forces Corps. They are among the best trained and most heavily indoctrinated troops in the DPRK. But they were ill-prepared for drone attacks and unfamiliar terrain far from their isolated homeland.

North Korean special forces have been trained primarily for pinpoint "sniper" missions such as urban warfare and infiltration into South Korea from the sea, air and through the rugged mountains of the Korean Peninsula. They are not trained enough to fight in trench warfare on flat, open terrain, said Doo Jin-ho, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for Defense Analysis in Seoul.

In addition, during the two years of the pandemic, when North Korea was completely isolated from the world, its special forces were deployed to strengthen border security with China. Because of this, they missed some of their scheduled exercises, Mr. Du said."From top to bottom, the North Korean military has had no combat experience for decades. The military apparently had a crash course in counter-drone and counter-infantry, but the question is how familiar they are with it," said Ahn Chang-il, a former North Korean army sergeant who lives in South Korea.

South Korean intelligence officials say North Korean soldiers were thrown into the Kursk battle after learning only a few military terms, such as "open fire," "artillery," and "on position" in Russian. That may not have been enough to establish battlefield cooperation.

As media wrote, untrained Korean soldiers are dying at the front from strikes by Ukrainian drones. North Koreans are so unadapted to the conditions of modern warfare that they try to fight off kamikaze drones with machine guns and their hands . One such case was recorded by Ukrainian drones.

İt also is reported that Russia is trying to hide the participation of North Korean soldiers in the war against Ukraine by giving them fake documents as welders and roofers.