North Korean prisoners who fought for Russia want to leave for South Korea
Two North Korean soldiers captured in Ukraine while fighting on Russia's side have written a letter expressing their wish to go to South Korea.
Source: Yonhap, a South Korean news outlet
Details: The head of a South Korea-based group of North Korean defectors said that the two North Korean POWs, both aged 20, wrote the letter in October after meeting a South Korean documentary producer at a POW camp near Kyiv.
The letter was handed over in early December.
Quotes from the letter: "We've made up our mind to go to South Korea, thinking of those in South Korea as our parents and brothers. [...]
A new dream and aspiration have begun springing up on the back of support from people in the Republic of Korea."
More details: The prisoners also expressed gratitude to those who told them that their current situation "is not a tragedy, but the beginning of a new life".
The South Korean government said it had informed the Ukrainian authorities of its readiness to accept the North Korean POWs if their intentions are confirmed.
Background:
- On 11 January, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Security Service of Ukraine reported that Ukrainian troops had captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia's Kursk Oblast.
- Special Operations Forces fighters released a video showing how they captured and evacuated a North Korean soldier from Russia. Another North Korean serviceman was shown by the Air Assault Forces.
- The Russian outlet Agentstvo. Novosti found that a forged military ID discovered on one of the captured North Korean soldiers had been issued in the name of a real resident of the Russian Republic of Tyva.
- The North Korean serviceman captured by Special Operations Forces in Kursk Oblast confirmed that he had fake Russian documents.
- Zelenskyy later published footage of the interrogation of the captured North Korean soldiers and said that Ukraine was ready to return them to their homeland as part of a prisoner exchange for Ukrainian captives held in Russia.
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