For these POWs going back to North Korea was likely not an option since they were expected to die in combat and would probably face labor camp if they returned after being captured:
Ukraine has recently sent two North Korean soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces to South Korea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.
“Recently, we sent two North Korean prisoners of war to the Republic of Korea,” Zelenskyy said during his address at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday (U.S. time), referring to South Korea by its official name.
Two North Korean soldiers were captured by Ukrainian forces in early 2025 after being deployed to Russia’s Kursk region in support of Moscow’s war against Ukraine. They have reportedly expressed their desire to come to South Korea.
You can read more at the link.
Wasn’t that nice of North Korea to provide some fireworks prior to the Trump-Xi summit? In all seriousness, the Kim regime does these launches to keep themselves relevant on the world stage. Every time there is an important summit involving the ROK, Japan, China, or the U.S., they fire missiles, and the international media dutifully reports on it, justifying why the Kim regime conducts them in the first place, and the cycle continues:
North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea within hours of each other Sunday, ahead of a high-stakes summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping set for later this week.
The missile were detected about three hours apart — the first at around 3:00 p.m. and the second at roughly 5:50 p.m., both launched from the Wonsan area, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
The first missile flew about 450 kilometers, while the second flew more than 600 km, the JCS said, adding that further analysis was under way to determine the exact specifications.
You can read more at the link.
Here is another clever use of North Korea by Putin, importing a slave labor force:
North Korea has sent around 100,000 workers abroad, mostly to China and Russia, with some involved in manufacturing military drones at Russian factories in violation of U.N. sanctions, an international monitoring report showed Wednesday.
The latest report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) showed that North Korea continues to deploy workers overseas despite a U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolution requiring U.N. member countries to repatriate North Korean nationals earning income within their jurisdictions by the end of 2019.
You can read more at the link.
I would think the only diplomacy that China would be supportive of between the U.S. and North Korea would be one that leads to the reduction or removal of U.S. troops in South Korea. If China is signaling little to no support for Trump’s diplomatic efforts with North Korea that likely means discussions about U.S. troop reductions is not being considered:
China may not block the resumption of diplomacy between the United States and North Korea but is unlikely to play a “central” role in their reengagement, a former senior U.S. diplomat said Thursday, ahead of the upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Daniel Kritenbrink, who served as assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs from 2021-25, made the comment in response to written questions from Yonhap News Agency, noting that Beijing will be “suspicious” of any significant thaw in the Washington-Pyongyang relations.
You can read more at the link.
The lack of state media amplification of these missile launches is believed to be a signal that the Kim regime is being respectful towards the Trump administration:
North Korean state media on Sunday made no mention of the ballistic missiles fired a day earlier, continuing a pattern of silence over its missile launches since early August.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and the Rodong Sinmun, the most widely read newspaper in the country, had made no mention of the launches as of 9 a.m.
On Saturday, North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles from the Wonsan area toward the East Sea, just a day after South Korea, the United States and Japan wrapped up their trilateral military exercise.
Pyongyang fired a short-range ballistic missile toward the East Sea on Aug. 6 and another on Aug. 12, followed by a barrage of the same type of ballistic missiles on Aug. 20, as South Korea and the United States staged their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise. North Korean state media remained silent on all three launches.
You can read more at the link.
It took a bit longer than the Kim regime expected, but their new destroyer has finally been fielded:
North Korea has commissioned its new naval destroyer Kang Kon, state media said Monday, as the country pushes to modernize its naval assets and sharpen its combat readiness at sea with nuclear-capable vessels.
Leader Kim Jong-un attended the commissioning ceremony held a day earlier at the eastern port city of Wonsan, where he called the new 5,000-ton destroyer “essentially an offensive destroyer” and part of “the state nuclear counteraction system,” according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“The new-generation destroyer should deal a deadly retaliatory blow at the enemies as it is a force involved in the state nuclear counteraction system,” the KCNA reported Kim as saying.
You can read more at the link.
