UNITED NATIONS\/SEOUL: Ukraine has transferred two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday \u200bin an address to the United Nations General Assembly.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecently, we sent two North Korean prisoners of war to the Republic of Korea,\u201d said Zelensky in his speech.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese guys are not easy to capture alive. One of them, when he realized he was going to be taken prisoner, tried to kill himself. And he was shocked that fate did not let him die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zelensky did not provide more details about \u200cthe return. Ukraine \u200ccaptured the two North Koreans in Russia\u2019s \u200bKursk \u200cregion in \u2060January \u200blast year. \u2060They were the first North Korean soldiers to be apprehended alive since the country joined the Russia-Ukraine war in 2024.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said at the time that he would hand them over to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if he could facilitate their exchange for Ukrainians held captive in Russia.<\/p>\n
Human rights groups, however, urged him to repatriate them to South Korea \u2060citing the risks of punishments the soldiers faced. South \u200cKorean media reported that the two \u200ccaptured soldiers had expressed their desire to defect \u200bto South Korea.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s foreign ministry \u200csaid it would not be able to confirm the matter, including \u200cdetails such as the timing of their return, citing the safety of the soldiers and their families. The country\u2019s unification ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
South Korea in June said it would accept all North Korean \u200cprisoners of war who fought for Russia and opposed any repatriation of them to Russia or North \u2060Korea.<\/p>\n
Zelensky also criticized \u2060North Korea for sending its troops to fight for Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is madness too. Why should Koreans give their lives in a war against Ukraine? Kim Jong Un uses them like currency. And he gets something in return,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
North Korea has sent around 14,000 to 15,000 soldiers since 2024 to support Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine, according to Ukrainian and South Korean estimates. Most of them have been deployed in the Russian region of Kursk, where they helped Moscow\u2019s forces repel a Ukrainian incursion.<\/p>\n
The country has also supplied Russia with millions of artillery and \u200bmortar rounds, ballistic missiles, long-range artillery \u200band multiple-launch rocket systems, according to Ukrainian and independent assessments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UNITED NATIONS\/SEOUL: Ukraine has transferred two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday \u200bin an address to the United Nations General Assembly. \u201cRecently, we sent two North Korean prisoners of war to the Republic of Korea,\u201d said Zelensky in his speech. \u201cThese guys are not easy to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":103425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103426,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103410\/revisions\/103426"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}