Koreans (soldiers, instructors, translators...) fighting for Ukraine and against

[Bob Riebe]

Kim, Kan, Chen, Moise, Maksym, Kaneki... are some of the Koreans of origin defending Ukraine from Russian invaders... and their allies from Pyongyang. They do not want the country to end up divided, as it happened in Korea, and they do not hesitate to confront their northern neighbors

Coincidentally, the scars on Kim's back resemble a map of the Korean peninsula divided by the 38th parallel, which is actually the incision made to remove a kidney after being attacked by a Russian drone. Both Kim's mother and father are of Korean origin, children of deportees from their peninsula settled in the USSR. Their offspring's families wanted their partners to also be Korean. Thus, the Kims gave birth to a son with typical features, without mixing, preserving cultural and religious traditions, but holding a Ukrainian passport and fighting for his country when invaded. Named Volodimir with the surname Kim. "After the wounds, I wanted to continue fighting as frontline infantry, although I admit it is so painful that I had to give up and take on an instructor position," he says in Ukrainian.

Now, this Ukrainian from Dnipro is a senior sergeant and instructs hundreds of new soldiers to know how to protect themselves and not be killed on the first attempt. Kim, nicknamed The Sorcerer, drives a military vehicle with a logo of a legendary Hwarang, also known as the "warrior of the flower," with his sword on his back. The same logo is on his camouflage jacket as a patch, along with other descendants of Korean deportees in Ukraine. "I have never felt like a foreigner in this land. I speak Russian and Ukrainian, and all my comrades treat me with great respect. They know I am a warrior and that I will die for this land if necessary," he says.

The war in Ukraine, about to enter its third year,
made headlines again a few months ago with the dispatch of about 13,000 North Korean soldiers sent as reinforcement by Kim Jong-un to his ally Vladimir Putin. After months of kamikaze assaults without armored vehicles and in broad daylight, they were withdrawn from the front due to the enormous casualties suffered, but this week they have been seen again, once more under the rain of Ukrainian drones. However, the Koreans fighting on the other side are much less known, but they are also thousands, and their story deserves to be told.

                                                                 
                                                                Kim proudly displays the "warrior of the flower" on his patch.

Chen, an activist and volunteer from Dnipro (Korean mother and Ukrainian father) treasures the history of those 5,000 people who arrived in Ukraine from different parts of Korea. "Only our grandparents speak Korean now because we, in an effort to adapt, learned Russian and Ukrainian as children," says Chen. "In my case, for example, I come from a branch of the Kim family, which I know originates from what is now North Korea." Chen knows many Ukrainian Koreans who are currently fighting on all fronts against Russia.

—What do you think about the fact that the leader of North Korea has directly involved himself in this war?

—I will tell you a word that is so strong that it has no translation in your language [he says it, and the translator cannot find a way to translate it into Spanish].

—Do you know if there are Koreans fighting for Ukraine on the Kursk front, precisely where the North Koreans sent by Pyongyang have been deployed?

—I know that there have been at least 100 of ours there at some point, of which about 20 have died. I know that the Ukrainian government has assigned them tasks such as radio monitoring or translating interrogations of prisoners. It makes sense, because we speak the same language and are the same people, even though they are now fighting for the brutal regime of North Korea.
Chen, in his humanitarian aid office.

                                                             
                                                           Chen, in his humanitarian aid office.

Wars have left Chen's ancestors in inaccessible cemeteries. His family did not know the Korean peninsula divided by civil conflict, as they were deported in the 1930s during the Japanese occupation. They arrived in the USSR seeking a place to settle and found it first in Kazakhstan and then in Ukraine. They were not the only ones. Thousands of Koreans went through the same and founded immigrant communities united by language and respect for traditions. The vast majority have not returned to Korea, but all see it as a distant and legendary home.

Chen cannot visit the graves of his relatives left in North Korea, but what is most dramatic for him is that he cannot visit the graves of his parents, buried in Donetsk occupied by the Russians. Each war, each new invasion, has been dividing his family and drifting away his ancestors.

A significant group of the first emigrants to the USSR were the so-called Koryo-saram before and during the Japanese colonial period and spread throughout the region, especially after their forced migration in 1937. Another group, the Koreans of Sakhalin, who lived on the island of the same name, are considered culturally different from the former. Both groups faced enormous difficulties and endured all kinds of hardships until being accepted by a regime that distrusted them and did not make it easy for them. "When my family arrived in Dnipro we wanted to integrate quickly, and I think we succeeded. Ukrainian society accepted us and found that we were hardworking and entrepreneurial people. Today, Koreans repay the favor at the moment when our country needs us most," says Chen in his small humanitarian aid office.
Kan fought in Afghanistan.

                                                             
                                                            Kan fought in Afghanistan.

To meet another Korean fighting for Ukraine, we must travel to Izium, one of the cities most affected by this war. On the third floor of a building split in half by an aviation bomb, Kan, an American volunteer on his father's side (an American military deployed in South Korea) who met his mother there, awaits us. Kan's nails are still dirty, like his military clothes. He has just finished training with his unit. "I come to contribute all I know to a just cause. I was part of the US Army. I spent nine years in Afghanistan during several deployments with paratroopers. That gave me experience that I can now use here. When Zelensky made the call for us to join Ukraine, I didn't think twice," says Kan. He is part of the third assault brigade in Ukraine, one of its elite units.

—The Korean War is the most forgotten today because technically it never ended. The peninsula was divided by a demilitarized zone, separating a democratic country from a tyranny. I wouldn't want the same to happen in Ukraine: two separate zones, one free and the other under an autocratic regime. I have a personal connection to that problem.

—What is the biggest difference between the war in Afghanistan and the one in Ukraine?

—The drones. In Afghanistan, we used them as a complement to our missions, but I had never seen anything like this. Here, the drone is king, it has much more capability than before, whether commercial or military.

—Would you like to face the North Koreans fighting alongside the Russians in Kursk?

Pyongyang has mobilized its best troops to send them to Russia. These are special forces soldiers with no combat experience, but fanatical about the regime. However, Moscow has not used them for their purpose —to fight beyond enemy lines, take enemy strongholds, or carry out sabotage— but in frontal assaults in broad daylight without armored support under Ukrainian drones, artillery, and running over anti-personnel mines.

                                                           
                                                          Moise lost his son Maksym

The casualties in the first weeks were terrible, and Ukrainian spy drones recorded them from above. Some Ukrainian soldiers described the tactics used later to combat those same drones: some of the North Korean soldiers served as human bait to attract the suicide drones, while others tried to take them down.

The price to be paid by Ukraine, where the fight against the invader has resulted in much bloodshed, has also been shared by this community. In a café in Kamianske (Dnipro), Moise, the father of Maksym, of Korean origin, Ukrainian by passport, who died in combat in Donbass, awaits us. "My son was not only our pride but also that of his military unit. He volunteered because he was always generous to Ukraine, the country that gave us everything." Moise shows pictures on his mobile phone of his son in his Ukrainian uniform and a big smile, one after another, until he reaches the fatal outcome, a grave, and on that same funeral altar, plates full of food, the Korean tradition.

Kan Kaneki is not the only Kan we will meet on this journey. Kan Kaneki is a Franco-Korean volunteer who fights in the international legion, the unit created by Zelenski at the beginning of the war to welcome all those who wanted to join his fight. Based in Kramatorsk, the capital of Ukrainian Donbass, he left South Korea with his family at the age of two, spent six years in the French army, and his main motivation for enlisting is "to gain military experience against a strong adversary." "In Europe, we thought Russia was a powerful army with a reputation as a fighting country, but I was really deceived by the low level of Russian infantry soldiers I fought in Ukraine. The good news is that in the meantime, I have been able to experience Ukrainian culture and have fallen in love with this country," Kaneki says.

—Would you like to fight against the North Koreans?

—[Laughs] I see it as an opportunity to apply my personal diplomacy against them on the front line. I would really like to because I know they have even less experience than Russian soldiers. I'm not saying it's easy, but facing them can be very interesting. I love my job, so I love gaining experience by fighting against a different type of soldiers like the North Koreans.