North Koreans see mass casualties on Ukraine front lines, U.S. says

North Korean forces are experiencing mass casualties on the front lines of Russia’s war against Ukraine, with a thousand of their troops killed or wounded in the last week alone in Russia’s Kursk region, White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters Friday.

The number far exceeds the figure U.S. officials have previously provided.

“It is clear that Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable and ordering them on hopeless assaults against Ukrainian defenses,” Kirby said, describing the North Korean troops’ offensive as “massed, dismounted assaults.”