EDITORIAL: Kim Jong-un Rewrites History — Soldiers Killed in Russia Are Portrayed as Heroes in Textbooks

What the Ukrainian Data Shows

The figures on North Korean casualties come from verifiable sources. The Kyiv Independent, citing the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, reported this week that more than 7,000 North Korean soldiers were killed or wounded during fighting in the Kursk region—the 2024–2025 campaign in which Ukrainian forces temporarily occupied part of Russian territory before withdrawing. Other earlier estimates cited approximately 6,000 casualties (killed and wounded) based on South Korean data. These figures are operational estimates, not certified casualty figures—but they are consistent across sources.

What Pyongyang Knows and Says About It

North Korea has not officially released any casualty figures. Pyongyang maintains absolute control over information regarding its deployed soldiers. Do families in North Korea know that their sons have died in Ukraine? Probably not—not through official channels. North Korean soldiers were reportedly instructed to commit suicide rather than allow themselves to be captured. In April 2026, Kim Jong-un praised the fallen soldiers for their “heroic suicide attacks and self-sacrificing explosions.” The language of the ultimate sacrifice, transformed into national glory. It is precisely this narrative framework that will now fuel Russian school textbooks.

North Korean families who do not know that their sons are dead. A Russian textbook that turns these dead into heroes. Two regimes, one and the same mechanism: silencing grief to manufacture propaganda.

Ri and Baek: Two Soldiers Who Want to Go to South Korea

Since January 2025, two North Korean soldiers—identified as Ri and Baek—have been detained by Ukraine. They are the first confirmed North Korean prisoners of war in this conflict. Both men have publicly expressed their desire to go to South Korea—an act that, under South Korean constitutional law, would make them South Korean citizens. One of them told the South Korean television network MBC: “If I am not taken to South Korea, I will eventually die. ” This is not an ordinary asylum request. It is a statement made under the pressure of forced repatriation, which could mean their execution.

The meeting of foreign ministers in Seoul on June 30

On June 30, 2026, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha, in Seoul. Their discussions regarding North Korean prisoners of war were described as “constructive” by the South Korean government. Cho stated on the X platform that both sides had agreed to seek a solution in accordance with international law and humanitarian principles, “while respecting the wishes of the individuals concerned.” Seoul reaffirmed its opposition to any forced repatriation of these soldiers to North Korea or Russia. This position is in line with Article 12 of the Geneva Convention, which requires that prisoners be transferred to a state capable of applying the Convention.

These two soldiers are the human symbol of all the atrocities this war has produced. Men sent to die in a foreign war by a regime that then presents them as heroes. Ukraine is holding them. South Korea wants to take them in. Russia is claiming them. International law dictates what should happen—politics will decide.

North Korea Declares Its Nuclear Status "Irreversible"

On June 20, 21, and 22, 2026, Kim Jong-un presided over the second enlarged plenary session of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The statements issued at the session were direct. Kim reaffirmed the principle of “continuously strengthening nuclear forces” and called for “exercising its status as a nuclear state.” The phrase “irreversible nuclear state” is not new—it has appeared in North Korea’s constitutional law since 2022—but its reaffirmation at this June 2026 plenary session sends a clear message to stakeholders at the NATO summit scheduled for July 7 and 8 in Ankara.

The Fortification of the Inter-Korean Border

During his speech at the June 23 plenary session, Kim Jong-un also pushed for the “fortification of the southern border.” This is the implementation of his concept of two hostile states on the Korean Peninsula—a doctrine that formally rejects any possibility of reunification and positions South Korea as a hostile foreign entity. This fortification has been accompanied by deployments of additional forces along the inter-Korean Military Demarcation Line (MDL), according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). At the same time, North Korean military engineers sent to Russia—approximately 1,000 in August 2025 for demining operations in Kursk—have been joined by contingents of drone specialists.

Kim Jong-un is deploying soldiers to Russia, fortifying his southern border, reaffirming his irreversible nuclear status, and preparing propaganda manuals. It is a coherent agenda: to consolidate a permanent state of war. Not for a single battle. But for a generation.

The Transfer of Military Technology to Pyongyang

The Russian-North Korean alliance is asymmetrical but mutually beneficial in the short term. North Korea provides troops and ammunition—artillery shells in particular. In exchange, Russia provides something Pyongyang values above all else: military technology. On June 20, 2026, Ukrainian intelligence reported that Russian technological upgrades had reduced the margin of error for North Korea’s KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles from several kilometers to between one and five meters. This represents a revolution in the precision of Pyongyang’s ballistic arsenal. A missile that previously missed a military base can now destroy it.

Pyongyang’s Financial Gains from the Conflict

Financially, the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses has estimated that North Korea has received more than $20 billion in military and technological transfers from Russia since the start of the conflict—a figure that includes weapons, equipment, and technology. More conservative estimates from the CIA range from $7 billion to $13.8 billion. In any case, this is a considerable windfall for an economy under severe sanctions. Pyongyang is thus financing its own nuclear and conventional programs thanks to the human resources it sends to Moscow. A macabre bargain: lives in exchange for deadly technology.

North Korea is sending its sons to die in Ukraine and, in exchange, is acquiring the technology to better threaten its neighbors. Putin and Kim are doing business. The democratic world is watching and must decide whether this transaction is acceptable.

A memorial museum opened in Pyongyang in April 2026

The rewriting of Russian textbooks is not an isolated act. It is part of a coordinated campaign to glorify North Korean soldiers who died in Russia. In April 2026, a memorial museum dedicated to soldiers deployed in Russia was inaugurated in Pyongyang. The ceremony was held under the auspices of Kim Jong-un, with senior Russian military officials in attendance. Vladimir Putin sent a congratulatory message in which he described the fallen North Korean soldiers as heroes whose exploits “will remain in the hearts of every Russian citizen.”

The Mechanism of the 2024 Strategic Partnership

This joint glorification initiative is part of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty signed in 2024 between Moscow and Pyongyang. This treaty provides for mutual assistance in the event of an attack against either signatory—which provided Kim Jong-un with the domestic legal justification to deploy his troops to Russia. The two regimes have constructed a shared narrative: Ukraine is the aggressor, Russia is defending its territory, and North Korea is answering the call of a partner besieged by the West. It is an entirely false narrative—but it is the narrative that Russian children will learn in school.

A museum in Pyongyang, medals in Moscow, textbooks in Saint Petersburg. Two dictatorships are jointly crafting a legend. The legend erases the actual deaths, the devastated families, the bodies never returned. That is the goal.

Neither of the two prisoners was included in the February 5, 2026, exchange

On February 5, 2026, a prisoner-of-war exchange took place between Russia and Ukraine. A total of 314 people were released during the exchange. However, neither Ri nor Baek were on the list. The two North Korean soldiers remained in Ukrainian custody. Their cases raise a specific legal question: Can Ukraine transfer them to South Korea without going through a formal exchange with Russia or without North Korea’s consent? Legal experts say yes—Article 12 of the Geneva Convention and the principle of non-refoulement permit transfer to a third country capable of guaranteeing treatment in accordance with the Convention, provided the prisoner freely consents.

The Political Obstacle Between Kyiv and Seoul

In practice, the decision is as much political as it is legal. Ukraine must weigh the diplomatic impact of a transfer to South Korea on its relations with countries that maintain ties with Beijing—China being a crucial partner of Pyongyang. South Korea, for its part, has stated that it would accept all North Korean prisoners who wish to come to its territory—including more than the two already captured. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun indicated after his June 30 meeting that “progress is expected” if the political will exists on both sides. This is a diplomatic way of saying: the solution is known, but the decision has not yet been made.

Two men seeking asylum, international law dictating how to proceed, and politicians who are hesitating. We’ve seen this movie before—with Ukraine, with refugees from around the world. The humanity of the individual case is drowned out by the geopolitics of the systemic issue.

Passing Down the Legacy of War to Future Generations

School textbooks are not written for the immediate present. They are written for the next generation. By incorporating North Korean soldiers, new drone tactics, and the “heroes of the special operation” into the curricula for 10th- and 11th-grade students, Russia is sending a clear message: this war is not a passing phase. It is foundational. It will be taught as a just war, won alongside loyal allies, against Ukrainian “Nazificationists” and their Western masters. The children who will read this textbook in 2027 will be between 15 and 17 years old. In three to five years, they will be of conscription age.

The Construction of a War Identity in Russia

This is what regimes that seek to establish themselves for the long term do: they reshape collective memory. The Unified Russian History Textbook—written in five months on Putin’s orders and co-signed by Medinsky—is not a history book. It is a civic education document designed to shape a generation that will view the war in Ukraine as a historical necessity and North Korean allies as brothers in arms. That is why the West must understand that supporting Ukraine is not just a momentary foreign policy choice—it is a decision about which version of history Russian children will learn in ten years.

Putin’s textbooks are training soldiers who will believe they are fighting for a just cause. This is precisely why Ukraine must win—not only on the battlefield, but in the narrative the world will retain of this war.

Understanding the Moscow-Pyongyang Axis as a Structural Alliance

The West has long treated the Russian-North Korean alliance as a temporary arrangement, driven by Russia’s shortage of ammunition. The events of June 2026 show that this assessment was inadequate. The alliance is structural: treaties, military deployments, technology transfers, joint glorification, and a shared historical narrative. Pyongyang does more than just sell shells to Moscow—it sends troops, shares its ballistic technology, and builds a common historical narrative with Moscow. It is an alliance between two states in a state of perpetual war that reinforce one another.

The democratic response: unequivocal support for Ukraine

The most effective response to this Russian school propaganda, the most concrete response to the sacrifice of the North Korean soldiers who died in Kursk, and the most just response to the desire for freedom expressed by Ri and Baek—it is all the same response. Support Ukraine with weapons, funds, and a continuous diplomatic presence. Sanction North Korea for its military transfers. Welcome prisoners seeking asylum. And refuse to let democracies allow authoritarian regimes to write history on their own. What is happening in Moscow’s school textbooks today will play out on the battlefields of tomorrow.

Education is a long-term weapon. Democracies know this but forget it. Authoritarian regimes know this and never forget it.

The Proliferation of North Korean Missiles Enhanced by Russian Technology

The military technology transferred from Russia to North Korea will have lasting effects far beyond the war in Ukraine. North Korean KN-23 and KN-24 ballistic missiles, whose accuracy has improved from a margin of error of several kilometers to one to five meters, represent a transformation that directly impacts the defense plans of South Korea, Japan, and U.S. bases in the region. This technology will not disappear when the war in Ukraine ends. It will remain in Pyongyang’s arsenal for decades to come. It is one of the most dangerous legacies of this conflict for global security.

The Broader Axis: Russia, North Korea, Iran, China

The Moscow-Pyongyang alliance does not operate in isolation. It is part of a broader axis that includes Iran—a supplier of Shahed drones to Russia—and China, which benefits economically from the sanctions circumvented by Moscow without exposing itself directly. These four powers do not form a formal bloc, but they share a common interest: the erosion of the rules-based international order that Western democracies have built since 1945. The question is whether democracies are aware of the scale of this systemic challenge and are prepared to respond to it with the same consistency with which their adversaries are confronting it.

Russia, North Korea, Iran, China. Four authoritarian regimes pushing in the same direction without formally coordinating. Democracies, on the other hand, must deliberate, vote, and persuade. The gap in speed is real. The answer cannot be to abandon deliberation. It must be to move more quickly in that deliberation.

Two Narratives of the Same War

There are now two versions of this war that will be told in parallel. In Russian school textbooks: a special, defensive, victorious military operation carried out with heroic allies, including North Korean soldiers who fell “with honor.” In the archives of democracies: an illegal invasion, well-documented and condemned by an overwhelming majority in the UN General Assembly, carried out with mercenaries and foreign soldiers recruited by a partner dictator. These two versions are not equivalent—one is verifiable; the other is fabricated. But in authoritarian regimes, it is the fabricated version that will be repeated, year after year, to millions of students.

What Ukraine really stands for

Ukraine is fighting for a cause that extends beyond its own borders: the right of states to exist as they choose, the right of individuals not to be dragged into a neighboring dictator’s war, and the right of history not to be rewritten by those who unleashed the violence. Zelenskyy has said this in many ways. The soldiers holding the front lines are illustrating it with their bodies. And somewhere in a Ukrainian prison, Ri and Baek—two young men who perhaps didn’t even know where Ukraine was two years ago—are waiting for a decision on their fate. Their freedom or their death will say something about all of us. About the ability of democracies to achieve what their children’s textbooks will teach as a moral victory.

Ri and Baek. Two names, two stories, two lives in the hands of a diplomatic process. They wanted to leave. International law says they can be allowed to leave. What’s missing is the political decision. That’s often the only thing missing.

Families Waiting for a Son Who Will Never Return

In North Korea, there is no free press, no public record of military casualties, and no independent Red Cross to notify families. Somewhere in apartments in Pyongyang, Hamhung, or Chongjin, families are waiting for sons sent “for training” who will never return. They probably do not know that their sons died on the Kursk front lines fighting a Ukrainian army that was defending its own land. School textbooks will not say so. The North Korean government will not say so. Only history—the true history, the one that the archives will eventually reveal—will tell the story one day.

The question Russian educators will never ask their students

Myagkov said that the textbooks would discuss the “new tactics” and “new weapons” used in Ukraine. He didn’t say that the textbooks would mention the Ukrainian children deported to Russia—for which the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin on this very charge. He didn’t say that they would mention the Ukrainian civilians killed in strikes on cities. He did not say that the textbooks would ask students why Korean soldiers, trained to defend the Korean Peninsula, ended up dying on the plains of Kursk. These questions will not have a section in the textbook. That is precisely why they matter.

The questions missing from a textbook are more revealing than the ones included. What we choose not to teach children is what we choose not to acknowledge as true. Moscow is making that choice. Deliberately.

A Bilateral Relationship Born Out of War

The June 30, 2026, meeting between Ministers Cho and Sybiha in Seoul illustrates something that would have seemed unlikely in 2021: Ukraine and South Korea now share a direct common strategic interest. Both countries face authoritarian regimes armed with nuclear warheads, willing to violate all norms of international law, and backed by opaque alliances with destabilizing regional actors. North Korea and Russia now share military infrastructure, arms contracts, technology transfers, and a joint memorial museum. Seoul and Kyiv, for their part, share something more fundamental: the existential threat of a nuclear-armed neighbor that denies their right to exist.

Decisions That Set Precedents

Whatever Seoul and Kyiv decide regarding the North Korean prisoners Ri and Baek will set a precedent. If Ukraine transfers them to South Korea in accordance with their wishes, it will demonstrate that international humanitarian law can prevail over geopolitical pressures. If Ukraine repatriates them to Russia or North Korea under pressure, it will send a different message—that the survival of individuals can be sacrificed on the altar of diplomatic negotiations. This is not an isolated case: it is a test of whether democracies’ rhetoric on human rights aligns with their actions in concrete cases.

What democracies do with two North Korean soldiers seeking asylum says more about their values than any speech at the UN. Principles are tested in difficult cases, never in easy ones.

Putin’s Textbooks Versus the Archives of Reality

Russian propaganda can rewrite its school textbooks. It can erect statues, open museums, and award medals. But it cannot erase the archives, the eyewitness accounts, the satellite images, or the statements made by captured prisoners. It cannot erase the fact that Ri and Baek—two North Korean soldiers—said on camera that they wanted freedom, not to return home. It cannot erase the UN General Assembly resolutions that have condemned the Russian invasion by an overwhelming majority since 2022. Propaganda has an expiration date. The truth, on the other hand, has an unlimited shelf life—if we preserve it.

What we owe to future generations who will read history

In ten years, twenty years, historians will write about this period. They will recount how North Korean soldiers were sent to die in Ukraine. How democracies chose—or chose not to—welcome them. How Russian textbooks turned the dead into heroes. And they will judge the actors of 2026 by their actions, not their intentions. Ukraine is resisting. Democracies are providing support—sometimes insufficiently, but genuinely. Russia is rewriting history. North Korea is sending its sons to war. Putin and Kim Jong-un are building a world together that they hope to impose by force. It is up to the democracies to decide whether they will accept the role of spectators, or whether they will choose to be active participants.

The history our children will read in thirty years will have been shaped by the decisions we make today. Putin’s history book is already in the works. So is ours—it’s called reality.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist