North Korean defector Hyun-Seung Lee claims Kim is pocketing huge sums of money that was meant for soldiers sent to fight for Russia in Mad Vlad’s war with Ukraine
Kim Jong-un is “making huge sums of money” from North Korean soldiers sent to the front line in Putin’s war in Ukraine as “cannon fodder”, it is claimed. The despot is accused of pocketing the reported $2,000 a month wages of troops sent to fight for Russia.
North Korean defector Hyun-Seung Lee — who was conscripted to the army at 17 — said the soldiers did not expect to be deployed to the battlefield and thought they were going to Ukraine as the support units, but “ended up on the front line as cannon fodder”.
Hyun-Seung, who served in the Storm Core — the elite military unit that has been sent to Ukraine — before he defected in 2014, added: “Most of the soldiers were supposed to die in this battlefield and Kim Jong Un is making huge amounts money off those sacrifices.”
He told the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast: “According to media reports, soldiers get paid $2,000 a month. North Korea never shared this money with the family members or soldiers. So Kim Jong-un is making a huge amount of money.”
He added: “Even when I was in the military, I got paid 50 North Korean Won per month, with which I could purchase a single ice cream and even general in North Korea are not paid enough. Their salary would be $1 per month and mostly they relied on the government’s rations.”
Around 4,000 of the 14,000 North Korean soldiers deployed to the front line in Russia’s war with Ukraine are believed to have been injured in combat, with around 600 killed. Many soldiers were told they were either being sent to Russia for training or to fight South Koreans.
North Korean expert Jean Lee told the podcast the Soviet Union was modern North Korea’s first benefactor and relations between the countries were reignited when Mad Vlad needed Kim’s help in his illegal invasion of Ukraine.
She said: “For the first time in many, many years, maybe ever, North Korea had something that Russia needed and that was a friend and a partner in this campaign in Ukraine.
“And the value for Vladimir Putin of having foot soldiers who might well be cannon fodder probably saves him some bodies, but also gives him a little bit of leverage in terms of selling this to the Russian people.
“In that sense I think the troops on the ground do play that frontline role that could help him prolong the conflict. But also there are very few countries that have that Soviet era ammunition that Putin needs, other than North Korea. They still have stockpiles of it.”
She added: “I do think Kim Jong-un is going to milk this relationship for as long as he can, as long as it is useful. And it has been very useful for a couple of years now.”
Kim last week met the bereaved families of soldiers killed fighting for Russia against Ukraine to express his “deep condolences” and presented them portraits of their dead loved ones wrapped in the North Korean flag.
And he was today seen with Putin as the pair met in Beijing after China held its military parade to mark 80 years since the country’s victory over Japan in World War Two.
Putin invited Kim to Russia after a two-and-a-half hour meeting on the side-lines of the parade, where the Russian tyrant praised North Korean soldiers fighting alongside his forces in Ukraine
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