Ukraine's military said 21 troops were killed and 40 injured in the operation in the Russian region where it is staging an incursion.

The paratroopers said the already-wounded North Korean ran "headfirst" into a concrete pillar when they tried to load him into a vehicle.

A South Korean lawmaker said Seoul's intelligence showed some 3,000 North Korean troops have been wounded or killed in Kursk.

A thousand North Korean troops who have been fighting in the Kursk region of Russia have been killed in Vladimir Putin ’s war with Ukraine, officials have said. Western officials have told the BBC that 36 per cent of North Korean forces fighting in Russia had been killed, injured or captured by mid-January.

Ukrainian forces described a different kind of enemy, fighting with unfamiliar tactics and little option to retreat.

A third of the troops North Korea deployed to western Russia’s Kursk Oblast late last year has been killed or wounded, according to Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky. Col. Ants Kiviselg, the head of the Estonian defense forces’ intelligence center, confirmed the claim.

When North Korea’s 12,000-strong 11th Army Corps deployed to Kursk Oblast in western Russia to help Russian troops battle an invasion by a powerful Ukrainian force, they brought along anti-tank vehicles, howitzers and rocket launchers.

North Korean troops have suffered thousands of casualties in Russia’s Kursk region, according to Ukrainian estimates

The Ukrainian special forces eliminated 21 and wounded another 40 DPRK soldiers during a North Korean assault on Ukrainian positions in Kursk.

A surrendering North Korean soldier risked his life by refusing to drop his sausage at gunpoint, according to the Ukrainian paratroopers who captured him...

Ukrainian SSO conducted an operation in Kursk, targeting North Korean troops and collecting DNA samples for identification and intelligence purposes.