{"id":68897,"date":"2025-01-13T15:57:51","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T06:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/13\/repatriation-or-a-life-among-enemies-what-fate-awaits-the-north-koreans-captured-by-ukraine"},"modified":"2025-01-13T15:57:51","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T06:57:51","slug":"repatriation-or-a-life-among-enemies-what-fate-awaits-the-north-koreans-captured-by-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=68897","title":{"rendered":"Repatriation or a life among \u2018enemies\u2019: what fate awaits the North Koreans captured by Ukraine?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Neither Russia nor North Korea has claimed the soldiers as their own yet, while South Korea could accept them as defectors<\/p>\n<p>The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said he is ready to hand over two North Korean soldiers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/12\/ukraines-capture-of-north-koreans-offers-rare-insight-into-russian-alliance-says-zelenskyy\">captured by Kyiv<\/a> in exchange for the return of prisoners of war held in Russia. But the future of the two injured men, who have been interrogated in their hospital beds, is far from certain.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking after South Korea\u2019s National Intelligence Service confirmed Ukraine\u2019s claim that it had captured the two soldiers \u2013 part of a North Korean force estimated at 11,000 \u2013 Zelenskyy issued an important caveat.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/13\/repatriation-or-a-life-among-enemies-what-fate-awaits-the-north-koreans-captured-by-ukraine\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Neither Russia nor North Korea has claimed the soldiers as their own yet, while South Korea could accept them as defectorsThe Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has said he is ready to hand over two North Korean soldiers captured by Kyiv in exch&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3060,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,419,222,930],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-korea","category-russia","category-south-korea","category-ukraine"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68898,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68897\/revisions\/68898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}