[시사일보=차덕문 기자] “Even though the Russian military is a much freer organization than North Korea, isn’t it? North Korean youth who are deployed will naturally open their eyes to the outside world.”
Lee Woong-gil (43), a former member of North Korea’s 11th Corps, the so-called ‘Storm Corps’, predicted in an interview with Yonhap News on the 30th that there is a high possibility that desertion and defection of North Korean Storm Corps members dispatched to the Ukraine war for Russia will continue.
He mentioned an eyewitness account that the dispatched North Korean soldiers looked young, in their late teens or early 20s, and said, “The faces seen in the videos spread online were not commander-level combatants, but looked like they had just been deployed to the unit,” he said. “It’s a pity that I was sent to,” he said.
Mr. Lee defected from North Korea in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province in June 2006 and entered the country in February of the following year. He was widely known among North Korean defectors with military experience as a member of the Storm Corps, and he appeared on television several times to reveal his experience as a North Korean special forces unit.
It is said that Mr. Lee served as a liaison adjutant to the brigade commander in the 87th Light Infantry Brigade of the 11th Corps from August 1998 and was discharged in October 2003 with the rank of ‘senior soldier’. The reason I supported the special forces was because I wanted to join the Labor Party faster than others.
The origin of the Storm Corps is ‘Kim Shin-jo’s unit.’ The 8th Special Corps, the parent body of the 11th Corps, was established in 1969 with Unit 124 at its center, and Unit 124 caused the January 21st Blue House attack.
As it is a similar unit to our Special Operations Command, not everyone will accept support. Mr. Lee explained that members of the Storm Corps are selected not only based on physical conditions but also on whether there are any problems with their ‘foundation’, or background.
After one year of common recruit training, those with martial arts qualifications and excellent physical strength are selected and undergo rigorous training to develop elite combatants.
Regarding the Storm Corps combat soldier training, Mr. Lee said, “It is a process of developing human murder weapons by repeating extreme training such as kicking a tree with several nails stuck in it with bare legs and ‘hand knife strike’, which involves quickly stabbing and pulling out the blade of the hand in hot sand.” I remembered.
He said, “I have seen one-on-one fighting training in a closed space, using objects around to subdue the opponent,” and added, “The goal is to create soldiers who can use any object around them, whether it’s a ballpoint pen or a spatula, as a murder weapon.” explained.
Mr. Lee believed that even if each member of the Storm Corps had excellent combat skills, it would be difficult for the North Korean military to make a major difference in the frontline battles in Russia and Ukraine.
He said, “The role of the Storm Corps is to quickly infiltrate behind enemy lines in case of emergency and perform missions such as assassinating key figures and destroying facilities, but the area where the troops are currently heading does not seem to be a place for such operations.” He added, “Missile warfare. “I don’t know what kind of results the Storm Corps will achieve in this war, which is mainly focused on unmanned aerial vehicles and electronic warfare,” he said.
Mr. Lee emphasized that even if the youth of the Storm Corps are of ‘good’ background, their thoughts will inevitably change once they experience the outside world and freedom, and that he is an example of such a thing.
He said, “If the troops dispatched this time are mainly new recruits, psychological warfare that induces defection using various means such as loudspeakers and broadcasts will be more effective.”
2024-10-31 00:41:00