At the unveiling of a towering bronze sculpture of North Korean and Russian soldiers in combat, Kim Jong Un praised troops who chose death over capture while fighting in Ukraine. It was a striking and unusually explicit acknowledgment of Pyongyang’s long-suspected battlefield doctrine.
According to a transcript published by North Korean state media KCNA, Kim declared that those who “unhesitatingly opted for self-blasting” and suicide attacks had shown the highest form of loyalty, a reference to soldiers throwing themselves on grenades or detonating explosives rather than risk being taken prisoner.
Kim made the remarks at the opening of a vast new memorial complex on the outskirts of the capital, walking past rows of freshly laid graves before kneeling to place soil into an open burial site. Inside, bronze statuary and black marble walls etched with names surround displays of soldiers’ remains, personal relics and captured military equipment. The site, part cemetery and part museum, is the centerpiece of a broader campaign to frame the deaths of North Korean soldiers in Russia’s war on its neighbor as acts of heroism and patriotic sacrifice.
For months, North Korean state media has offered vivid and often graphic accounts of how those soldiers died. Previous reporting has described troops detonating grenades as they were surrounded, shouting for comrades to stay back before triggering the blast, or killing themselves after being wounded to avoid capture. In one account, soldiers embraced each other before setting off explosives.
For years, intelligence agencies, Ukrainian officials and defectors have reported that North Korean soldiers were expected to take their own lives rather than be captured. Pyongyang never confirmed it. Now the doctrine is being endorsed at the highest level, in public, at a site built to honor the war dead.
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