making it difficult and unwise to deploy them effectively in assault roles in fast-moving frontline environments.

There was also the scurrilous rumour that many of them spent at least the initial period of their deployment obsessed with and gorging on smartphone porn.

The 100,000 troop figure quoted in the article is assumed to allow for rotation - a luxury ordinary Russian troops don't often enjoy - so that number won't all be deployed at the same time.

Kim Jong Un is not sending 100,000 North Korean soldiers all at once.

That hardly makes a person exceptional in NK...

The orcish lines must surely be on the verge of collapse if this is what they're resorting to.

Last edited Wed Nov 20, 2024, 01:31 PM - Edit history (6)

Relating to orcs? (monstrous humanoid creatures)?

forget about Michael Madden's quote: "These soldiers are trained to withstand a high degree of physical pain and psychological torture"
( I now regret even including that line in the OP)

The more important quote from the article is:
"Many of the troops deployed to Russia are some of Pyongyang's best, drawn from the 11th Corps, also known as the Storm Corps --- a unit trained in infiltration, infrastructure sabotage and assassination."
Couldn't these "Storm Corps" troops do significant damage to the Ukrainian army?

To quote from the Patton movie: “no son of a bitch ever ever won war by dying for his country, he wins by making some other son of a bitch die for his country”

but it played well in the movie and seems to fit his personality.

"North Korean troops are conditioned with unwavering loyalty to their leadership and a unique psychological resilience cultivated by the regime," designed to fit a sense of "absolute sacrifice for the state" into Pyongyang's personnel, Ji Hyun Park, a North Korean defector, now a senior fellow for human security at the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, previously told Newsweek.

"However, this psychological preparation may not translate effectively into practical resilience in the type of active combat scenarios currently seen in Ukraine, where they would face modernized and highly capable opposition in unfamiliar territory," Park said.

North Korea may also face morale, desertion and defection problems if its troops start sustaining casualty figures approaching those Russian fighters are experiencing, Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution's Center for Asia Policy Studies, recently told Newsweek.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/north-korean-defectors-boost-ukraines-fight-against-kim-jong-uns-troops/ar-AA1tVR2K

Most North Korean soldiers are underfed and poorly equipped, experts and escapees from North Korea say. The level of malnourishment in the population is reflected in the minimum height and weight requirements for military conscripts: soldiers must be at least 4-foot-10 (148 cm) and weigh 95 pounds (43 kilograms) to be eligible to serve, according to research by the South Korean Unification Ministry.

North Korean men are drafted into the military. They typically begin their service at 17 years old, and serve for eight to 10 years. Some women also serve in the military, typically for five years.

Although (the soldiers deployed to Ukraine) are among the North’s best trained troops, these soldiers are likely to face difficulties adjusting to modern warfare, said Hyunseung Lee, a North Korean escapee and human rights advocate who trained with the Storm Corps for six months while he served in the North Korean army’s Special Forces.

“They’re not trained with the best technology [or] advanced equipment,” Lee said. “If they were deployed in the war’s battlefield, the Ukrainians will use advanced technologies and drones and missiles. They will just not have had that experience before.”

Lee noted that for the vast majority of these Special Forces soldiers, deployment to Russia will be their first time encountering battle — and the outside world. He added that the soldiers are “victims of a ruthless deal between Kim Jong-un and Putin,” and that “many of them are facing their first real battle, ill-equipped and terrified.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/29/north-korea-elite-troops-russia-ukraine-war/

But, (from the MSN article), I'm unclear about "the material delivered to Ukrainian officials":
"which includes written instructions and audio messages for North Korean fighters on how to defect to Ukraine's embassy in Seoul, South Korea"

How would any such defectors actually "get" to Seoul, South Korea?
Would they have to "run away at night" towards the Ukrainians, and hope to not be seen doing so by their military commanders?
How could they be sure the Ukrainians wouldn't shoot them, thinking they were attacking them?

Last edited Wed Nov 20, 2024, 06:59 PM - Edit history (1)

The implications of that for state reprisals on their relatives if the troops did defect, or perhaps even surrender, are clear.