JAKARTA - Two North Korean soldiers captured in Ukraine while fighting for Russia have written a letter expressing their desire to defect to South Korea, an activist in Seoul said.
Jang Se-yul, head of a North Korean defector group in South Korea, said the two North Korean captives, in their 20s, wrote the letter in October, when they met a South Korean documentary filmmaker at a prisoner of war camp near Kyiv.
The letter was delivered to the group through the producer earlier this month.
"We have decided to go to South Korea, considering those in South Korea as our parents and brothers," the letter said, as reported by The Korea Times (24/12)
In the letter, the captives expressed their appreciation to those who said that the situation they are currently facing "is not a tragedy, but the beginning of a new life."
"New dreams and aspirations have begun to grow thanks to the support of the people of the Republic of Korea," he said.
North Korean prisoners of war have been in the media spotlight since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote online in January that they had been captured by Ukrainian forces in Russia's western Kursk region during the fighting.
Jang said the letter confirmed their desire to go to South Korea. In February, only one of them expressed such intentions during a meeting with a South Korean lawmaker.
North Korea has deployed about 15,000 troops to Russia to support its war with Ukraine since October last year.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
