North Korea releases advertising video to praise the soldiers who fought Ukraine
A few days after Kim Jong-un joining Vladimir Putin, North Korea has released a propaganda film to praise their troops to fight Russia in the war against Ukraine.
The 20-minute video, released by the North Korean state media KCTV, showed strongly dramatized images of soldiers in a snow-covered battlefield-handling weapons, gathering with Russian soldiers, and setting out explosives on trees.
Aerial images were also displayed that allegedly show the damage caused by the North Korean soldiers, with excerpts of explosions and directed attacks.
Other parts of the video emphasized the patriotism of the soldiers – with a scene apparently showing soldiers to contemplate a framed portrait of Kim and another showing a soldier leaning against the North Korean flag.
It is not clear to what extent the images are authentic or were staged or manipulated, as is common in North Korean propaganda. CNN cannot verify independently when and where the videos were filmed.
“They are presenting their participation in the Ukraine War as an important achievement, such as another confirmation of the military power of North Korea and its loyalty to the party, the state and the leader himself,” says Andrei Lankov, professor of Korean studies at Kookmin University in Seoul.
The video offers an optimistic view of the situation on the ground in a theater that has become notorious for mass attacks and horrible low -side rates on the Russian side. Western authorities estimated that one third of the 12,000 North Korean soldiers accredited as part of the initial implantation were killed or injured.
The program, initially involved in secret, was later confirmed by both Pyongyang and Moscow. In recent weeks, Kim has finally acknowledged the loss of troops, holding two events in August to find families in mourning.
Last Friday, he promised “a beautiful life” for the families of the “martyrs” who died fighting for Russia, reported the state media. In early August, he said his “heart hurts” with photographs released by state-owned media showing the leader to embrace families in tears and kneel before the portraits of the deceased soldiers.
The advertising video released on Sunday also paid tribute to these soldiers, starting with a statement that the troops participated in operations to “release” the Russian region of Kursk in October 2024, following Ukraine’s surprise offensive. He also mentioned some dead soldiers and described how they died.
For decades, North Korean propaganda has emphasized the importance of its army, but “it had very little real content to present,” says Lankov, referring to the previous lack of real experience of this army in battlefields.
“Now they had a royal war where, in general, the North Korean soldiers fought quite well,” he adds. “It is understandable that this probably becomes an important theme of your internal propaganda, your ideological domestic education and your indoctrination.”
North Korea has been approaching Russia since the beginning of the war, with experts warning that Moscow may be offering Pyongyang military and technological assistance in exchange for their troops.
Visit to Beijing
Kim and Russian leader Vladimir Putin will be both in Beijing this Wednesday for a great military parade that marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II-preparing the scenario for an impressive demonstration of unity between the two autocratic and Xi Jinping leaders from China.
This will be Kim’s first trip to China since 2019. Kim, who has only made 10 trips abroad since taking power in 2011, left his country for the last time in 2023 to be a remote space base in the far East of Russia.
Hong Min, senior researcher at the Korean Institute for National Unification in Seoul, states that North Korea may have released the video before this visit to Beijing to portray Kim as “an important leader with a strategic position in Northeast Asia, equivalent to Putin and Xi Jinping at the celebration of Victory Day”.
This would reinforce the narrative that North Korea is “forming a front of solidarity with powerful countries on the diplomatic stage,” adds Hong.
This Sunday, Kim also inspected missiles on a “newly opened” production line and informed the “general condition of state missile production capacity,” reported state agency KCNA this Monday.
Images published by KCNA showed Kim in a place not disclosed to inspect several dozen weapons at different stages of production and talking to uniformed officers.
According to the KCNA report, North Korea “successfully fulfilled” its five -year plan to expand the missile production capacity.
“Several types of missiles have been put in series production,” the agency reported, adding that Kim ratified three new long -term plans “related to missile production capacity.”
North Korea in recent years, rapidly modernizing its Armed Forces, developing new weapons and testing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching almost anywhere in the United States.
Kim also promising recently strengthening and threatened to use it for.
