At least 18 soldiers provided to Putin by Kim Jong Un were said to have abandoned their positions after arriving to the front, Ukrainian media reports.
  • DaddleDew@lemmy.worldEnglish
    331·
    2 hours ago

    Imagine living in a 1950’s time bubble. You are being constantly told through propaganda that your military force is cutting edge and that it can easily overwhelm any enemy.

    Then you are being sent to fight on a battlefield where everyone has better gear than you, where you are confronted to weapons that are so far advanced beyond anything that you’ve ever seen they might as well be magic. Then you see said weapons completely obliterate your comrades without giving you a chance to even see the enemy who operates them.

    You only obeyed so far because you feared what your government might do to you if you didn’t. Now you’ve found something that you fear even more.

      • M0oP0o@mander.xyzEnglish
        9·
        46 minutes ago

        Novel? As in a book of fiction? This is happening right now. I am sure some video of this will come out of this sad story and maybe in a few years some of these people who surrendered will be able to write their own story first hand. (I am assuming they will not want to go back to nk).

  • Linktank@lemmy.todayEnglish
    61·
    1 hour ago

    How pathetic does Russia have to be to be bringing NORTH KOREAN troops into the war. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.

    • Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      23 minutes ago

      What’s pathetic about it? Cannon fodder is cannon fodder. They can hold a rifle just as well as any other person, and they can use it to kill. Acting like getting foreign troops helping you is somehow beneath you in a war is insane

    • peopleproblems@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 minutes ago

      Its TAU TACTICS!

      LIKE KROOT! with significantly less survival rates and effectiveness which is damn impressive

  • Stovetop@lemmy.worldEnglish
    341·
    3 hours ago

    I know a good number of North Koreans would love to defect if there weren’t going to be consequences for their families back home. Put those people in a situation where they can just disappear and have it explained as being honorably slain in combat? Seems like a golden opportunity if the country they defect to doesn’t just send them back.

      • Stovetop@lemmy.worldEnglish
        152·
        2 hours ago

        Hah, got me there.

        I did actually meet a North Korean once when I spent a fair bit of time in Seoul during a study abroad program, but she “defected” as a child (read: smuggled into the South via China by some Christian group) and didn’t really have much recollection of what life in the North was even like. Definitely not many though!

    • Valmond@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      1 hour ago

      Hi Kim, me and my whole family wants to def … go to Ukraine and die for you!!

      The whole family!

  • cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.mlEnglish
    45·
    43 minutes ago

    I’m not sure I trust any of these claims. The sources are all Ukrainian which means they are highly likely to be war propaganda at worst and heavily biased at best. No matter what anyone’s preconceptions about North Korea or Russia may be, independent verification is needed to know if any this is true.

      • pandapoo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        8 minutes ago

        No, they’re pointing out the obvious. Newsweek isn’t what it used to be, and the claims are all sourced from Ukraine, with no external on the record confirmations, yet.

        Ukrainian media has a moral obligation to service the propaganda needs of their war. That’s neither good, nor bad, that’s just a part of being in an existential war for survival. I don’t blame them for it, and I’m certainly not bashing them for, I’m just pointing out reality.

        I can’t speak for the person you’re responding to, but I have no trouble understanding why North Korea would send thousands of support personnel to Ukraine as the logistical tail to support their weapons platforms. Western nations have been doing the same thing inside Ukraine.

        Maybe the story is true, it’s possible. But I’m going to need to see better sources provided then a Kyiv Post article citing unnamed Western officials or Newsweek using Ukrainian articles as their source information.

        That’s it. If anything, it’s more unreasonable to not be skeptical of early reports coming from any war zone, whether you want to believe them, or not.