A young North Korean soldier said he didn’t know where he was fighting when he was sent from his isolated homeland to the front lines of the war between Russia and Ukraine. When asked if his parents knew where he was, another North Korean soldier shook his head.

The a three-minute video clip which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on social media on Sunday. ​Platform X shows a Ukrainian official interrogating two North Korean prisoners of war with the help of a Korean translator. Ukrainian authorities announced their capture on Saturday, saying they were the first North Korean soldiers to be captured alive. Mr. Zelensky later offered to exchange them for Ukrainian prisoners of war held in Russia.

The soldiers’ responses came on footage supplied and edited by Ukraine, which controlled the production and release of the video. It offered a small, but rare, insight into the appraisee’s mindset and readiness 11,000 North Korean soldiers deployed to help Russia in its war against Ukraine.

They appeared to back up what South Korean and U.S. officials have said in recent weeks: North Korean troops are taking heavy losses in a foreign war fought in unknown territory while their government kept their schedule secret from their people.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers in Seoul on Monday that it estimates 300 North Korean soldiers have been killed and 2,700 wounded in fighting against Ukraine. The White House has set the toll is even higher.

​Memorandums found on dead North Korean soldiers indicate their government urged highly indoctrinated soldiers to end their own lives rather than be captured on the battlefield, according to South Korean lawmakers who briefed reporters after a closed-door meeting with the spy agency, echoing a claim by . Zelensky. A North Korean soldier tried to blow himself up with a grenade while shouting the name of ​North Korean leader Kim Jong-un when he was shot by Ukrainian troops, they said.

North Korea has not responded to reports that its troops have been captured or killed by Ukrainian forces. It has never announced the deployment or large shipments of North Korean artillery shells and other weapons sent to Russia to aid its war against Ukraine, even though they marked the country’s first intervention in a major armed conflict abroad in decades.

In a video released by Mr Zelensky, the voice of the official interrogating the North Koreans was distorted, perhaps to prevent their identification, and the captured troops were apparently still wounded. Ukraine said the soldiers were given medical attention and taken to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, for questioning. But with the release of the video clip online, it appears that Ukraine is also using POWs in its messages to the West.

The Ukrainian leader used the deployment of North Korean troops for Russia as a way to try to win more support from allies. South Korea has also cited North Korea’s growing military alliance with Russia as a source of international concern.

Experts say POWs’ comments should be evaluated in light of the power imbalance between captors and captives, while recognizing that POWs may not speak freely and may be motivated by their own safety or a desire to be treated well.

Under the rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, governments are supposed to protect prisoners of war from becoming a “public curiosity,” a concept sometimes interpreted as not being presented in a public setting.

Lying in bed with both hands wrapped in white bandages, one of the two North Korean POWs looked confused as he indicated — by nodding or shaking his head — that he didn’t know he was fighting against Ukraine when he was captured or that he was now in Ukraine.

When he was sent to the front line on Jan. 3, he said he was only told that North Korean troops would “train as if we were in real combat.”

“I saw my colleagues dying next to me,” he said. “I was hiding in the dugout when I was wounded.”

When asked if he wanted to return home, the soldier asked if Ukrainians were good people. When the translator agreed, he said in a weak but pleading voice, “I want to live here.”

Another North Korean soldier had a bandage wrapped around his wounded jaw and was not speaking. He nodded when asked if he had parents in North Korea. But he shook his head when asked if they knew where he was.

“The video clip of the two soldiers shows that Kim Jong-un has failed to find a way to justify his country’s involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian war to his people,” said Kang Dong-wan, an expert on North Korea. at Dong-A University in South Korea. “It also showed that North Korean troops are being wasted like cannon fodder.”

The two soldiers belonged to the General Reconnaissance Bureau, the intelligence arm of the North Korean military, South Korean officials told reporters at a briefing. Lawmakers said that when soldiers were sent to war, their government promised to treat them as “heroes”.

The soldiers were captured in the Kursk region of western Russia, where North Korean forces have been fighting to help Russia retake territory seized by Ukraine during a surprise cross-border incursion last summer.

​North Korean troops fired at drones flying in the distance in a futile attempt to destroy them, South Korea’s intelligence agency told lawmakers, citing battlefield footage it analyzed. They also recklessly charged their enemies without proper artillery support from the rear, it said.

Mr. Kim is believed to be reaping billions of dollars worth of oil, food and weapons technology in exchange for supplying Russia with troops and weapons, according to South Korean analysts and officials. But the troop deployment was so rushed that North Korean soldiers were poorly prepared for modern warfare, especially drone attacks, they said.

On Sunday, Mr. Zelensky said that Ukraine is “ready to hand over Kim Jong-un’s soldiers to him if he can organize their exchange for our warriors who are captured in Russia.”

“For those North Korean soldiers who do not want to return, there may be other options. In particular, those who express their desire to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korea will get that opportunity,” he added.

Professor Kang said that by exposing the face of a North Korean soldier and his desire to stay in Ukraine, Ukrainian authorities are putting his safety at risk if he is sent back to North Korea, where his statement would be interpreted as an act of treason.

​If any North Korean prisoners of war wanted to defect to South Korea, the government in Seoul was ready to negotiate with Kiev, South Korean lawmakers quoted the intelligence agency as saying.