North Korean soldiers kill themselves to avoid capture in Ukraine, U.S. says
Summary
The U.S. claims Russia is deploying North Korean soldiers in Ukraine, using them in “human wave” assaults against Ukrainian defenses.
North Korean soldiers are reportedly being treated as expendable, with some choosing suicide over capture due to fear of reprisal against their families.
Ukraine reports significant casualties among North Korean troops, with some allegedly killed by their own comrades to prevent capture.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/north-korean-soldiers-suicide-avoid-capture-ukraine-russia-rcna185625Open linkView original on lemmy.world338
Comments29
They assume other countries treat POW's like NK does.
It's worse they're scared the government will go after their families. It's not fear for themselves.
it's both. they see no positive path to a positive outcome for anyone. and that's the point of the kind of terror regimes like north korea and russia implement. the more terror you keep a person under all the time, the easier it is to give them an apparent strong man who claims to deliver them from the terror he implements
Ironic that the strongman they're fighting for is callously throwing their lives away.
that's what the strong men do. they promise to keep you safe from the terror they implement, but for you to be scared, there must be real risk of your death
That's just how it works.
From the article itself, it sounds more like they're afraid of their families being punished for their failure by their own government; not for how they fear they thesmelves would be treated.
Sadly that's a legit fear for them. NK will torture and murder your whole family over some petty shit.
Nah, they just send the entire family to forced labor camps…
Sounds specifically like torture
Damn that's even worse
Nah, they’re worried they’ll get sent back to NK
The US believed that communists invented mind control because POWs kept coming back as sympathizers.
The article claims that the likely motivation was to protect their families from reprisals.
It’s probably also dishonorable. Even if the regime didn’t do anything to their families the families still lost face. Can’t really go back to their families if they get captured and survive since that basically equals to cowardice and desertion. Japanese culture was like that during WWII. Current day NK culture has a lot of similarities with Japanese culture from before WWII. Like the honor thing and cult like emperor worship.
That's fine and dandy for them, but when their great great grandkids are born into prison camps, they may not view it as worth it. North Korea is fucked.
Yeah. Isn't it sad they buy into what ever shit is telling them it'd be the worst for them?
I want to show this to the next PMP who talks about "bringing on more resources to the project."
So sad being born north korean.
Just a life of suffering and servitude because you're surrounded by people who have been bred to be docile.
They’re probably under orders to do this. Very sad!
That's not why they're killing themselves, it's so they don't have to go back to NK.
Why would Ukraine send them back there? If NK wants them back, it'd probably be expensive...
Maybe you would, maybe your family is, but not everyone is in your situation.
There 7 billion people on earth. Each family is different.
We passed 7 billion back in 2011, and have since gained 1.2 billion more.
Exponential growth goes brrrrr.
Population growth hasn't been exponential for a while.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File%3AWorld_Population_Prospects.svg
Now imagine you knew nothing of the outside world and your only experience with it was a hostile one.
If we all lived under an NK like regime and half of all folks thought like you, we'd all be dead. What's worse is we've got to get down to at most 16% to have a sizeable number of survivors and that's assuming a single direct family line - I know NK laws include replicating punishment up and down two generations but I don't know if siblings, siblings by marriage, or cousins get included in that.
There's actually a strange amount of rebellion that policy creates - there's never a reason to report a family member - and the shared danger will usually develop pretty strong familial bonds.
Anyways, I'm fond of my family but I'd be pretty reluctant under any circumstances to cause the death of anyone else and I suspect most people who haven't been through something like military training are in the same boat.
Jesse what the fuck