Two North Korean soldiers captured by Ukrainian defence forces in Russia's Kursk Oblast in January have asked to be transferred to South Korea and reportedly attempted to harm themselves.

Source: Barron's citing AFP and Yonhap

Details: The two prisoners of war made the request to be sent to South Korea during an interview for a documentary held on 28 October, Barron's reported.

"The two (POWs) asked the producer at the end of the interview to take them to the South," said Jang Se Yul, the head of an organisation that supports North Korean defectors and himself a defector from North Korea.

The video interview has not yet been released, but according to Jang, it is expected to be made public in the coming weeks.

Yonhap also quoted Jang as saying that both prisoners expressed a desire to go to South Korea, a change from February, when only one of them voiced such a wish during a meeting with a South Korean lawmaker.

Photos show that a jaw wound one of them sustained during capture has now healed, though some bone deformation remains.

It was also noted that hand-drawn portraits of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were hanging above one of the prisoners' beds.

The prisoners reportedly asked the producer to provide eye medicine, knitted clothes, trousers, cigarettes, pens and books, Jang said.

He also relayed statements from Ukrainian officials saying that the North Korean captives were in a state of psychological instability and had attempted self-harm.

Under South Korea's constitution, all Koreans are regarded as citizens, including those living in North Korea, and Seoul has stated that this applies to any North Korean soldiers captured in Ukraine. South Korea has informed the Ukrainian government of its readiness to accept the prisoners if their intentions are confirmed.

Background:

• On 11 January, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Security Service of Ukraine announced that Ukrainian soldiers had captured two North Korean servicemen in Russia's Kursk Oblast.
• Special Operations Forces posted footage of the capture and evacuation of one North Korean soldier from Russia, while another was shown by the Air Assault Forces.
• The Russian outlet Agentstvo.Novosti reported that a fake military ID found on one of the captured North Koreans was issued in the name of a real resident of Russia's Tyva Republic.
• The captured soldier confirmed that he had been carrying falsified Russian documents.
• Zelenskyy later released interrogation footage of the North Korean prisoners and said Ukraine was prepared to return them to their homeland as part of a prisoner exchange with Russia.

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