Fictitious claims of the presence of North Korean soldiers were sold as news for a long time.
What was astonishing was that for several months there was no evidence - no captured North Koreans, no North Korean bodies found by the Ukrainians, not even a single photo or video, despite satellites and drones constantly monitoring the battlefield.
Nevertheless, the narrative persisted, and the North Korean soldiers in the Russian region of Kursk, who were allegedly fighting against the NATO-backed Ukrainian invasion forces, were constantly discussed and described in the Western media as if they had actually been there.
Only rarely did doubts arise, as once in a BBC report in English, which stated: “Despite weeks of reports that up to 10,000 North Korean soldiers had been sent to Kursk to join the Russian counter-offensive, the soldiers we have been in contact with have yet to meet them.”
The BBC quoted one soldier: “I haven't seen or heard anything about Koreans alive or dead,” and the sarcastic comment of another Ukrainian soldier: “It's very difficult to find a Korean in the dark woods of Kursk, especially when he's not there.”
France 24 was the only Western mainstream media outlet to review all photos and videos allegedly showing North Korean soldiers in Russia. France24 believed it had seen some North Korean soldiers in pictures taken in the Far East.
All pictures and videos allegedly showing North Korean soldiers in Kursk did not show North Korean soldiers or were faked, according to France24.
Colonel Doug Macgregor is an exceptional American military man and analyst. He became famous as the clever and courageous commander of an armored regiment that defeated multiple enemy forces in the Iraq war.
He later spent several years as an advisor to the head of the Pentagon on behalf of the US President. He holds an MA in comparative politics and a PhD in international relations from the University of Virginia and has written five books.
Among the many military analysts, he was one of the few voices to offer a competent and honest opinion that many did not like:
“You've heard these reports about North Korean troops supposedly being in eastern Ukraine. That is a total lie. There is no evidence for that. The people who are watching closely with the help of satellites have not seen anyone on the ground who resembles anyone from North Korea.
The only North Korean troops in Russia are in eastern Siberia. They are not west of the Urals. So there is nothing like that. This is being used as another pretext for escalating the war.”
Incorruptible military experts such as Macgegor also pointed out that the North Koreans who have so far been sighted somewhere in Russia, but not in Kursk, are foot troops without artillery or armor (tanks or armored personnel carriers) who are far away from the war front for training purposes.
North Korean soldiers would be a disruptive factor and no support for the Russian armed forces
The North Korean People's Army has not fought in a major land conflict for decades since the armistice in the Korean War in 1953. It therefore lacks experience and has largely outdated equipment.
This was the decisive factor in the shift in North Korean military doctrine to a simpler, cheaper and more effective nuclear deterrent.
The different military doctrine and military philosophy of the Russian and North Korean armies is also not insignificant, as is the training of the soldiers and the weapons systems.
As we know from the experience of the NATO armies, it takes years of training and joint exercises before they are able to fight in a coordinated manner on a war front.
The incompatibility of North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian soldiers is obvious: there is not even a language overlap, i.e. the North Korean soldiers do not speak Russian and the Russian soldiers do not speak Korean. So how can these soldiers work together on the battlefield?
The ex-North Koreans in Russia who don't speak Korean
Western mainstream journalists, “experts” and politicians cannot imagine that there are also North Korean Russians serving as soldiers in the Russian armed forces.
However, it is not known whether some of them are fighting on the war front in Kursk.
But how did this come about?
In the mid-19th century, many Koreans began to emigrate to the Russian Far East due to food shortages in North Korea and other difficulties in their homeland. This migration began in the 1860s, shortly after Korea became a neighboring country of Russia.
The Russian authorities in Vladivostok viewed Korean migrants favorably, as they were considered hardworking, family-oriented and law-abiding. Compared to other Asian immigrants, such as the Chinese, they were considered desirable settlers.
By the early 1900s, Korean farmers were no longer a rarity in the Russian Far East. They were known for their industriousness and their ability to produce much-needed food in the region.
Over time, many Koreans in Russia integrated into local society and eventually obtained Russian citizenship.
In the Soviet Union, they were subjected to the first forced mass transfer from the Korean border to the north of Khabarovsk and to more distant areas such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which began in 1930 and ended in 1937.
Korea was then a Japanese colony, and the Soviet state, which regarded Japan as its enemy, feared that Japan, which had allied itself with Nazi Germany in 1936 when the two countries signed a treaty against the Soviet Union and its allies, might use ethnic Korean citizens in the Soviet Union as spies and saboteurs against the Soviet Union.
In 1956, three years after the death of the paranoid Stalin, the Soviet Union for the first time granted Koreans the freedom to decide for themselves where they wanted to live and what they wanted to do.
Facts, logic and plausibility are sacrificed to a politically motivated conspiracy theory
Do you remember how much the alleged presence of dangerous North Korean troops on the Russian-Ukrainian front was reflexively invoked by the forced-fee-financed broadcasters and all other mainstream media until recently?
On October 26, 2024, the Frankfurter Rundschau brazenly claimed that the estimated 3,000 to 15,000 North Koreans had to help the Russians out of a jam in Kursk. But according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, Russia recruits 30,000 soldiers every month.
Like any other typical conspiracy theory, the Frankfurter Rundschau and other mainstream media deny facts, plausibility and logic.
And unlike Russia, Ukraine suffers from an enormous shortage of soldiers and tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are deserting. It therefore seems downright absurd that Russia is dependent on North Korean soldiers, whether it is 3,000 or 15,000.
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