World
North Korea’s suicide soldiers pose new challenge for Ukraine in war with Russia
The United States has warned the experience in Russia will make North Korea “more capable of waging war against its neighbours”.
After a battle in Russia's snowy western region of Kursk this week, Ukrainian special forces scoured the bodies of more than a dozen slain North Korean enemy soldiers, Reuters reported.
Among them, they found one still alive. But as they approached, he detonated a grenade, blowing himself up, according to a description of the fighting posted on social media by Ukraine's Special Operations Forces on Monday.
The forces said their soldiers escaped the blast uninjured. Reuters could not verify the incident.
But it is among mounting evidence from the battlefield, intelligence reports and testimonies of defectors that some North Korean soldiers are resorting to extreme measures as they support Russia's three-year war with Ukraine.
"Self-detonation and suicides: that's the reality about North Korea," said Kim, a 32-year-old former North Korean soldier who defected to the South in 2022, requesting he only be identified by his surname due to fears of reprisals against his family left in the North.
"These soldiers who left home for a fight there have been brainwashed and are truly ready to sacrifice themselves for Kim Jong Un," he added, referring to the reclusive North Korean leader.
Kim, introduced to Reuters by Seoul-based human rights group NK Imprisonment Victims' Family Association, said he had worked for North Korea's military in Russia for about seven years up until 2021 on construction projects to earn foreign currency for the regime.
Ukrainian and Western assessments say Pyongyang has deployed some 11,000 soldiers to support Moscow's forces in Russia's western Kursk region, which Ukraine seized in a surprise incursion last year. More than 3,000 have been killed or injured, according to Kyiv.
North Korea's mission to the United Nations in Geneva did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moscow and Pyongyang initially dismissed reports about the North's troop deployment as "fake news". But Russian president Vladimir Putin in October did not deny that North Korean soldiers were currently in Russia and a North Korean official said any such deployment would be lawful, read the report.
Ukraine this week released videos of what it said were two captured North Korean soldiers. One of the soldiers expressed a desire to stay in Ukraine, and the other to return to North Korea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
North Korea's deployment to Russia is its first major involvement in a war since the 1950-53 Korean War. North Korea reportedly sent a much smaller contingent to the Vietnam War and to the civil conflict in Syria.
The United States has warned the experience in Russia will make North Korea "more capable of waging war against its neighbours".
North Korea's leader Kim has previously hailed his army as "the strongest in the world", according to state media. Propaganda videos released by the regime in 2023 showed bare-chested soldiers running across snowy fields, jumping into frozen lakes and punching blocks of ice for winter training.
But a South Korean lawmaker briefed by the country's spy agency on Monday said that the numbers of North Korean soldiers wounded and killed on the battlefield suggests they are unprepared for modern warfare, such as drone attacks, and may be being used as "cannon fodder" by Russia, Reuters reported.
More worryingly there are signs these troops have been instructed to commit suicide, he said.
"Recently, it has been confirmed that a North Korean soldier was in danger of being captured by the Ukrainian military, so he shouted for General Kim Jong Un and pulled out a grenade to try to blow himself up, but was killed," Lee Seong-kweun, who sits on the South Korean parliament's intelligence committee, said.
Memos carried by slain North Korean soldiers also show that North Korean authorities emphasized self-destruction and suicide before capture, he added.
When asked about further details of the cases he referred to, he declined to elaborate saying it was information from Ukraine shared with South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS). NIS did not answer calls seeking comment on Tuesday.
Suicides by soldiers or spies not only show loyalty to the Kim Jong Un regime but are also a way to protect their families left at home, Yang Uk, a defence analyst at the Asan Institute of Policy Studies said.
Ukraine's Zelenskiy said on Sunday Kyiv is ready to hand over captured North Korean soldiers to their leader Kim Jong Un if he can facilitate their exchange for Ukrainians held captive in Russia.
For some North Korean soldiers, however, being captured and sent back to Pyongyang would be seen as a fate worse than death, said Kim, the North Korean defector and former soldier.
"Becoming a prisoner of war means treason. Being captured means you are a traitor. Leave one last bullet, that's what we are talking about in the military," he said.
World
Trump declares ‘only two genders’ to be official US policy
Following the inauguration, the president is slated to depart the Capitol and head to the nearby Capital One Arena, where he will address supporters during a rally that will also feature a presidential parade.
Donald Trump declared there are “only two genders” as he was sworn in Monday as the 47th president of the United States, returning for a second term in office.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders -- male and female,” he said, marking the first mention of gender in an inaugural address.
"The golden age of America begins right now," Trump said minutes after he was sworn in during a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda, the first since 1985, when Ronald Reagan moved the ceremony indoors due to exceptionally frigid temperatures.
In his inaugural address, Trump also used words such as “Manifest Destiny,” "National Emergency," "Colorblind," "Sanctuary," "Horrible," "Suburban," “Betrayal” and “Weaponization” for the first time in history.
Following the inauguration, the president is slated to depart the Capitol and head to the nearby Capital One Arena, where he will address supporters during a rally that will also feature a presidential parade.
World
Trump sworn in as 47th US president
Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama attended the inauguration. Tech tycoon and Trump’s biggest supporter Elon Musk also attended the ceremony.
Donald Trump sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday at the Capitol Rotunda by Chief Justice John Roberts.
At the ceremony, Trump vowed to make America "greater, stronger and more exceptional" than ever before.
Former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama attended the inauguration. Tech tycoon and Trump's biggest supporter Elon Musk also attended the ceremony.
The inauguration ceremony took place indoors due to the cold temperatures in Washington, DC, unprecedented in decades.
In the meantime, Trump signed a barrage of executive orders following the ceremony.
The new orders include tougher anti-immigration measures as well as pardons for people convicted for their role in the Capitol Hill attack on January 6, 2021.
Ahead of his inauguration, Trump met at the White House with the outgoing president Joe Biden – a courtesy the Republican had denied his Democratic successor in 2021.
Earlier, Trump had attended a church service. Alongside, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook, some of the most powerful tech moguls in the world, attended the service.
Trump, 78, was a political outsider at his first inauguration in 2017 as the 45th president.
World
Trump promises harsh immigration crackdown on inauguration eve
Trump repeated his campaign pledge to launch the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, which would remove millions of immigrants
Donald Trump told thousands of roaring supporters he would impose severe limits on immigration on his first day in office, vowing to swiftly fulfill the central promise of his presidential campaign at a rally on Sunday inside a packed Washington arena a day before he returns to power.
"By the time the sun sets tomorrow, the invasion of our country will have come to a halt," he said to cheers at a "Make America Great Again Victory Rally" at the Capital One Arena.
Trump repeated his campaign pledge to launch the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, which would remove millions of immigrants. An operation of that scale, however, would likely take years and be hugely costly, Reuters reported.
The rally resembled the free-wheeling campaign speeches that have been a Trump staple since his first serious White House run in 2016, with the former and future president delivering a mix of boasts, false claims and sweeping promises to the delight of the crowd.
"This is the greatest political movement in American history, and 75 days ago, we achieved the most epic political victory our country has ever seen," he said. "Starting tomorrow, I will act with historic speed of strength and fix every single crisis facing our country."
The event marked his first major address in Washington since his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the storming of the U.S. Capitol by an angry mob of his supporters.
Trump has said he will pardon many of the more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the attack.
Trump's rally, along with his inaugural address on Monday, could preview the tone he plans to adopt during his second White House term.
In recent weeks, Trump has bewildered foreign allies by musing aloud about taking over Greenland and the Panama Canal and turning Canada into a U.S. state.
He vowed to repeal "every radical and foolish executive order of the Biden administration" within hours of assuming the presidency at noon.
A source familiar with the planning said Trump will take more than 200 executive actions on Monday.
Border security will figure prominently in Trump's first executive orders, another source said, including classifying drug cartels as "foreign terrorist organizations," declaring an emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border and moving toward reinstatement of the "Remain in Mexico" policy that forces non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their U.S. court dates.
Trump's deportation plans have unsettled immigrants subject to removal, including some who immigrant advocates say are law-abiding, long-term residents with U.S.-citizen spouses and children.
Trump said he would "get radical woke ideologies the hell out of our military" and order the military to construct a missile defense shield over the U.S., though he has yet to offer details on how to carry it out.
He also pledged to release classified documents relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and his brother Senator Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., both in 1968.
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