Ukraine calls on North Korean soldiers to surrender and promises safety, food and medical care

euronews: Ukraine’s project “I Want to Live” has posted a new video in the Korean language, calling on North Korean soldiers to surrender to Ukrainian forces upon their deployment to the combat zones.

The video shows POW camps in Ukraine and promises that after they surrender, soldiers will be held in compliance with the Geneva Conventions, with the guaranteed safe conditions of detention, food, and medical care by the Ukrainian side.

"No matter how many soldiers Pyongyang sends to help Russia, no matter the destination - Ukrainian POW camps are ready to receive soldiers of any nationality, religion, and ideological views."

 According to Ukraine’s Defence Ministry's Main Directorate of Intelligence, the first North Korean military units arrived in the combat zone in Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday.

What is 'I Want to Live'?

Launched in September 2022 by Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence, the 24-hour hotline was meant to help Russian soldiers willingly surrender themselves or their units to the Ukrainian army.

As of June, more than 300 Russian servicemen had already surrendered to Ukrainian captivity, using the government-created initiative, Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence representative Andrii Yusov said earlier this year.

"The number of people willing to surrender has increased. Within the framework of this project alone, more than 300 Russian occupiers have already surrendered to Ukrainian captivity," he explained.

"Some of them immediately expressed their desire not to be exchanged or even to join the security and defence forces."

According to Yusov, over 35,000 applications have been sent “mostly from serving Russian military personnel, as well as people who may end up in the Russian Armed Forces and want to protect themselves, unwilling to take part in the war of aggression and not become war criminals.”

The vast majority of them are willing to return to their homeland after the end of “hostilities,” but to avoid future problems with the law, they are registered as captured and not marked as having voluntarily defected or surrendered.

Can North Korean troops access it?

North Korean citizens do not have access to the internet, and very few of them own computers.

Smartphones in North Korea are limited in function and subject to surveillance and control measures that make them useful for only basic communications and consumption of state-approved content.

In Russia, the “I Want to Live” project website was banned nationwide less than a month after its launch. However, it is still possible to access it using a VPN or messengers, a hotline, and a chatbot run by Ukraine's Defence Ministry.

Addressing the Pyongyang soldiers in Korean, the new video says, “You must not die senselessly in a foreign land. You must not repeat the fate of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers who will never return home."