The wounded soldiers were taken to Kyiv for questioning by Ukrainian investigators in cooperation with South Korean intelligence.
Ukraine has reportedly captured two North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region of Russia and taken them to Kyiv, where investigators are questioning them.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said two prisoners of war were “in contact” with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the country's law enforcement agency.
“Russian soldiers and other North Korean soldiers often kill wounded people to remove any evidence that North Korea is involved in the war,” Zelenskyy wrote on X on Saturday.
Ukraine's SBU said one of the captured soldiers was undocumented, while the other was carrying a Russian military ID in the name of a man from Tuva, a Russian region bordering Mongolia.
“The prisoners do not speak Ukrainian, English or Russian, so communication with them is done through Korean interpreters in cooperation with South Korean intelligence,” he said.
According to the SBU, one of the soldiers said that he was told that he was going to Russia for training, instead of fighting in Ukraine.
The organization said that all these men are given medical treatment in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
Ukraine did not provide evidence that the captured soldiers were from North Korea.
Kyiv has repeatedly said that North Korean troops are fighting in the Kursk region, where they launched an attack in August, claiming control over several hundred square kilometers of territory.
However, this is the first time that the country's intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to question North Korean soldiers. Although Ukraine claimed to have captured North Korean soldiers in the fighting, it said they were seriously injured and died shortly after.
Last month, a Ukrainian military official said that 200 North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian forces in Kursk had been killed or wounded in the fighting.
The North Korean casualty estimate came weeks after Ukraine announced that Pyongyang had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help in its three-year war against its smaller neighbor.
The White House and the Pentagon last month confirmed that North Korean soldiers have been fighting on the front lines, particularly in the children's areas.