I’m tripping over their bodies,” said Sydney Seiler, the U.S. national intelligence officer for North Korea from 2020 to 2023. “Kim Jong Un is selling North Korean soldiers as cannon fodder mercenaries,” South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said last month. It’s an entirely new environment for the North Korean soldiers, who live in one of the most isolated and repressive countries in the world. The Russian military is teaching the North Korean soldiers about 100 key military terms, but “North Koreans are having a difficult time learning Russian,” South Korean lawmakers Lee Sung-kwon and Park Sun-won said last month. North Korean soldiers’ inexperience could be another point of friction and a major factor in how they are deployed.

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