Haunting last diary entry of North Korean soldier, 27, sent to die as Putin’s cannon fodder 6 time zones away from home
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THE haunting final diary entry written by a North Korean soldier sent to die for Vladimir Putin has been uncovered. The 27-year-old fighter was killed by Ukrainian Special Forces in an operation inside the Kursk region of Russia. The author – Jeong Kyung-hong – penned his congratulations to his comrade Song Ji Myung [or Yong] on his birthday.
It was the soldier’s heart-breaking attempt to cling onto a remnant of normality amidst the warfare hell he had been thrust into. The entry was one of the last things he wrote before he died. It reads: “I, having left my homeland, on unfamiliar Russian land, send birthday congratulations to my friend Song Ji-myung (Yong).
“I wish you health. "December 9, 2024 – Jeong Kyung-hong.”. Images of the diary entry and the dead soldier were released by Ukrainian forces. This is the first entry to be translated from the captured notebook, according to the special forces. The dead soldier had a fake ID suggesting that he was from Kyzyl in Tuva - a republic on the southern Russian border with Mongolia - and was a welder by profession.
Russia has provided similar bogus backstories for many of the North Koreans fighting against Ukraine. It is evident they want to hide the scale of the recruitment of Pyongyang fighters, which are thought to number 12,000. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that “the number of killed and wounded North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region already exceeds 3,000 people”.