As the sun set during an April 26 ceremony opening a memorial to North Korean troops killed in the Ukraine war, “countless white balloons of remembrance” floated into the sky from grave sites to approximately 280 soldiers.
Those graves, surrounding Pyongyang's new Memorial Museum of Combat Feats in Overseas Military Operations, represent a fraction of approximately 2,000 soldiers that South Korean intelligence says fell during the campaign to drive Ukrainian forces out of Russia’s Kursk region.
North Korea had earlier commemorated just 101 soldiers fallen in the military campaign in western Russia. Neither Pyongyang nor Moscow have released casualty figures from the Kursk campaign.
Naoko Aoki, a political scientist with the RAND think tank, told RFE/RL that the relatively small number of soldiers being publicly memorialized in North Korea are likely from the most obedient echelon of a rigid social hierarchy in the country.
“North Korea has a social classification system called songbun, which categorizes people into groups based on their forbears’ loyalty to the regime,” the North Korea expert told RFE/RL.
"This determines one’s access to everything from food, education, and work,” she said, adding “I think we can assume that those who are memorialized, like the 101 soldiers honored in a ceremony last August, are from a class that the regime considers reliable.”
The sprawling memorial facility has been built opposite apartment blocks, which North Korean state media claim was built for the families of soldiers killed in Russia.
Between late 2024 and June 2025, North Korea sent an estimated 14,000-15,000 troops to help fight off a Ukrainian occupation of Russia's Kursk region amid the Kremlin's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Both Moscow and Pyongyang initially denied reports that North Koreans were fighting Ukrainian forces, but, in April 2025, both acknowledged the presence of the Asian troops on Russian soil. Pyongyang has since made the chapter a propaganda focal point inside the authoritarian country.
Aoki says that "given the number of soldiers involved, keeping this secret was going to be difficult, even for North Korea."
Aoki says Pyongyang’s decision to lavishly commemorate the fallen soldiers is a message directed, in part, toward the Kremlin. “For Russia in particular, this is yet another reminder of how much North Korea has done for the country.”
In a speech during the opening ceremony, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hailed “a new history of friendship between Korea and Russia written in blood.” According to North Korean state media, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed a letter to Kim, calling the new memorial "a distinct symbol of the friendship and unity between the peoples of our two countries."
In return for sending its soldiers, it is believed Pyongyang has received cash, food, and technical assistance.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently claimed thousands of North Korean troops remained in Russia as of February. Only two North Koreans have been captured alive by Kyiv, and both are currently being held in Ukraine.
