“All DPRK military personnel fighting against Ukraine may be killed or wounded by April 2025 — ISW January 17, 07:33 AM Share: Fake Russian documents of alleged North Korean military (Photo: Special Operations Forces Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine / Facebook) North Korea may lose wounded or killed its entire contingent of approximately 12,000 military personnel stationed in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, already by the middle of 2025, if the North Korean forces”, — write on: ua.news
Fake Russian documents of an alleged North Korean soldier (Photo: Command of Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine / Facebook)
North Korea could lose its entire contingent of approximately 12,000 troops stationed in Russia’s Kursk region, wounded or killed, as early as mid-2025 if North Korean forces continue to suffer the current high level of casualties.
Analysts of the Institute for the Study of War write about this in their new report.
They remind that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, announced at the beginning of January 2025 that 3,800 North Korean servicemen were killed or wounded in the Kursk region. The Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Rustem Umerov, noted as early as November 5, 2024, that North Korean forces began to participate in “small-scale” clashes in the Kursk region. However, from about December 6, Russian “militants” began to claim that North Korean forces were participating in larger-scale hostilities.
Thus, North Korea was probably losing about 92 soldiers per day from the beginning of the participation of its military in significant hostilities against Ukraine in early December 2024, sums up in ISW. Analysts recall that the DPRK has transferred a total of approximately 12,000 of its military personnel to the Kursk region.
So all the soldiers of the North Korean contingent in Kurshchyna could be killed or wounded in about 12 weeks (around mid-April 2025) if North Korean forces continue to suffer the same high casualties in the future.
National Intelligence Service of South Korea On January 13, she said that so far, about 300 North Koreans have been killed during hostilities in the Kursk region and up to 2,700 have been wounded. North Korean forces are likely to suffer more wounded than killed in action — as is typical in armed conflicts — and it is currently unclear whether wounded North Korean soldiers will be willing to return to combat.