Pyongyang Claims 1.4M Youths Enlist as Tension Flares With Seoul

North Korea claimed that 1.4 million youths have applied to join or rejoin the military for Pyongyang’s “sacred war of destroying the enemy with the arms of the revolution” amid rising tension with South Korea.

Pyongyang’s official KCNA news agency published the report, accompanied by purported photos of youth signing petitions at an undisclosed location.

“If a war breaks out, [South Korea] will be wiped off the map. As it wants a war, we are willing to put an end to its existence,” the KCNA report said.

The enlistment claim came after Pyongyang accused Seoul of dropping propaganda leaflets in the North last week using drones, with Pyongyang later destroying roads and rail lines near the border on Tuesday.

Reuters noted that Pyongyang has made similar enlistment claims that are, as a rule, hard to verify.

“Last year, state media reported on 800,000 of its citizens volunteering to join the North’s military to fight against the United States. It also said in 2017 that nearly 3.5 million workers, party members, and soldiers volunteered to serve,” Reuters reported

Reuters added that Pyongyang likely has “1.28 million active soldiers and about 600,000 reservists, with 5.7 million Worker/Peasant Red Guard reservists among many unarmed units,” citing data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

There have been speculations that Pyongyang has also deployed soldiers to Ukraine after signing a bilateral military cooperation agreement with Moscow, with Pyongyang announcing soon after the agreement that it’d deploy a military engineering unit to support Russian forces on the ground in the Donetsk region.

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Kyiv Post’s intelligence sources claimed an Oct. 3 missile strike near Russian-occupied Donetsk killed six North Korean officers, injuring three more. Seoul’s defense chief later commented that the report was “highly likely” true “considering various circumstances.”

On Tuesday, 18 North Korean soldiers were reported to have deserted their positions somewhere on the border between the Bryansk and Kursk regions of Russia near Ukraine, with Ukrainian intelligence claiming that Moscow is forming a battalion consisting of up to 3,000 North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine.

While there have been confirmed reports of North Korean weapons – including missiles – being used by Russia against Ukraine, there has not been visual evidence sustaining claims of Pyongyang troops’ presence in Ukraine.

That said, Russian President Vladimir Putin did submit a draft law on Monday to Russia’s State Duma to ratify a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement between Pyongyang and Moscow.

A key provision of the agreement states that if either Russia or North Korea is attacked and enters a state of war, the other party will provide military and other assistance using all available means, although Russia has thus far officially refused to acknowledge its invasion of Ukraine as a war and that the Kremlin instigated the attack on its neighbor, both in 2022 and 2014.