It’s not every day a dictator admits his soldiers are taking a beating, but North Korean leader Kim Jong Un just did exactly that with a somber nod to the deaths of 100 troops fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
According to Fox News, in a rare moment of candor, Kim publicly recognized significant casualties among the thousands of North Korean soldiers dispatched to aid Vladimir Putin’s forces in the Kursk region, during a ceremony that tugged at even the hardest of heartstrings.
Let’s rewind to April, when Kim first confirmed he’d sent a hefty contingent of troops to back Putin in Kursk, a southwest Russian hotspot that’s seen more than its share of bloodshed.
By early July, Kim was already mourning a few fallen soldiers, standing over flag-draped coffins in a display that seemed more staged than sincere—yet even then, he kept the numbers vague.
Fast forward to Friday’s ceremony, where Kim finally owned up to a bigger toll, honoring 100 soldiers as “heroic” while hugging children and shedding what looked like crocodile tears for the cameras.
Now, 600 deaths have been reported in Kursk alone, though South Korea’s intelligence pegs the total casualties at a staggering 4,700 out of the 15,000 troops sent since last year—turns out, proxy wars aren’t a walk in the park.
Speaking of Kursk, up to 12,000 North Korean troops were deployed there in the fall of 2024, with another 3,000 joining early this year to counter a Ukrainian operation that’s kept the region a tinderbox.
While Russian forces have reportedly clawed back control of much of Kursk after Ukraine’s bold cross-border move in August 2024, fighting still rages, and it’s anyone’s guess how many North Korean soldiers are left standing there.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s not sitting idle—on Thursday, their drone strikes hit the Novoshakhtinsky Oil Refinery in southern Russia, a major supplier for Putin’s war machine, processing 7.5 million tons of oil a year. Talk about hitting where it hurts.
Back at the ceremony, Kim gushed, “The liberation of Kursk proved the fighting spirit of the heroes,” according to East2West news service.
Sure, Kim, but let’s be real—glorifying a meat grinder of a conflict as some noble crusade doesn’t erase the body count or the grief of families left behind.
He also boasted about the “victorious conclusion of overseas military operations,” hinting that North Korea’s role in this mess might be winding down—but don’t hold your breath for clarity on whether troops are actually coming home.
Reports from earlier this year floated the idea that North Korea might send even more soldiers to Moscow’s aid by summer’s end, though there’s no word yet on fresh deployments.
Kim’s vague rhetoric about “victory” leaves us wondering if he’s just posturing for propaganda or genuinely pulling back from a fight that’s cost him dearly in both lives and credibility.
At the end of the day, this whole fiasco shows the steep price of playing geopolitical chess with human pawns—North Korea’s losses in Ukraine are a tragic reminder that dictators’ alliances often bleed more than they build. Actions, as they say, come with a hefty bill.
