North Korean soldiers are sacrificing themselves as targets for Ukrainian drones after replacing Russians on the front in the war against Ukraine. That’s disclosed by a South Korean specialist on North Korea, Shim Jae Hoon, in reporting on the suffering of the 12,000 or so North Koreans fighting Russia’s war in the unfamiliar terrain of the Kursk region bordering central Ukraine. 

“To avoid being hit by multiple drone attacks from the air, North Koreans have taken to forming a ‘human shield,’” says Mr. Shim, who worked for years for the Far Eastern Economic Review. “One soldier exposes himself to attract a flying drone, while two others following him from behind can shoot it down.” 

Mr. Shim, writing for the website, Asia Sentinel, concludes North Koreans believe “exposing one soldier to death to save two others is an acceptable tactical sacrifice” that puts into relief “their lack of training” in modern warfare. 

“It’s a suicidal way of fighting,” Mr. Shim quotes an analyst as saying. A Ukrainian soldier, enlarging on the sacrifices made by the North Korean enemy, described the North Koreans as “out of their minds charging into the enemy fire even though they were being mowed down.” 

South Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, Hwang Joon-kook, said disregard for the lives of North Korean soldiers, as described by two whom the Ukrainians have captured, showed they were viewed as “expendables.”

Mr. Hwang told the UN Security Council the North Koreans used “old-fashioned human wave tactics and were then chased and attacked by Ukrainian drones,” according to Seoul’s Yonhap News. “They even were crossing land mine fields in a single column, three to four meters apart, like human mine detectors without cover or mine-clearing vehicle.” 

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, said Mr. Hwang, is learning that news of the suffering of the North Koreans, wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian passports, may be getting through to North Korean citizens.  The soldiers’ families, he told the Security Council, including the Russian and Chinese ambassadors, share “fear and anxiety” that “their sons and brothers are being used as slave soldiers and mere cannon fodder.” 

Mr. Hwang accused North Korea of treating its troops “as a cynical means of sustaining its regime,” while advancing production “financially and technologically” of weapons of mass destruction — a reference to Russian support of North Korea’s program for building nuclear warheads and missiles. 

A long-time Korea analyst at the Heritage Foundation, Bruce Klingner, believes there’s been “sufficient reporting to indicate North Korean troops are ill-prepared for the modern battlefield.” 

Mr. Klingner, who early in his career worked for the CIA, said “Intercepts of Russian communications” had been “strongly critical of the poor quality of the North Korea forces.” 

The North Koreans, he tells the Sun, “rely on waves of unsupported infantry attacks on fixed defensive positions.” That’s a throwback to the tactics of Chinese and North Korean soldiers in the Korean War. 

Moreover, said Mr. Klingner, the weapons that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has agreed to sell to the Russians are often not effective. “North Korean artillery ammunition has had a high failure rate,” said Mr. Klingner. “Even recently produced North Korean ballistic missiles have not reliably reached their targets.” 

Nor can the North Koreans be certain that combat experience in Ukraine will be all that helpful for North Korea’s armed forces of about 1.2 million troops. 

“While exposure to modern warfare could provide valuable experience,” said Mr. Klingner, “doing so requires that the troops survive in order to pass along their expertise.” The rate of up to one third of the North Koreans killed or wounded in the war, he said, raises “serious questions as to how many of Pyongyang’s soldiers will actually make it home.” 

Mr. Shim cites other problems. 

“North Koreans wounded in battle are moved mostly to a hospital reserved only for them, so as to avoid mixing with Russians,” he said.  

“Complaining about language barriers and other hassles, Russian nurses have been heard loudly talking to their friends about North Koreans they have had to care for.” Also, “Russian soldiers have complained about the large amount of food that North Koreans are said to consume.”