After two years fighting for Russia on the frontlines in Ukraine, Aleksei returned to his home town of Vladivostok last summer to recover from a shrapnel wound to his leg.
Looking to speed up his recovery and take a break from the city, he asked his military unit in Russia’s far east to see if he could secure a state-sponsored stay at a sanatorium – a health resort offering a mix of medical treatment and rest.
A few weeks later, Aleksei was instructed to pack his bags and board a two-hour flight to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, before continuing his journey to a health centre in Wonsan, a city on the country’s east coast.
“It wasn’t what I expected, but I thought I should try it out,” said Aleksei, who asked for his name to be changed so he could speak freely about his experience.
Aleksei said his superiors informed him that the more popular sanatorium destinations on the Black Sea and in the Altai mountains were already fully booked by the time he sent in his request. “So they offered a trip to North Korea,” he said.
Aleksei appears to be one of the hundreds of Russian soldiers covertly sent to North Korea for medical rehabilitation and rest, as the country takes on a new role of caring for Russian troops wounded in the war against Ukraine.
The previously unreported trip is the latest sign of the growing military and political alignment between Russia and North Korea since the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
This cooperation has culminated in Pyongyang deploying more than 10,000 troops to support Russian forces in the south-western Kursk region, according to western estimates.
During his week-long trip to North Korea, Aleksei said he shared a facility in Wonsan with about two dozen other Russian soldiers, enjoying access to a pool and a sauna. He spent his days playing table tennis and cards with fellow servicemen.
“The facilities were clean and good overall, and the sun was shining,” he said. Still, he complained that he did not receive the medical treatment typically expected at a sanatorium, while the meals were “tasteless and lacked meat”.
He and the other soldiers were forbidden from wandering outside in the evenings or making contact with locals. Alcohol was also hard to come by, he added.
Since the start of the war, hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers have returned home, many participating in government-funded programmes for rehabilitation.
Russian government organisations for veterans, which oversee trips to the hundreds of sanatoriums across the country, have not publicly promoted the trips to North Korea, nor has any footage of the visits been released.
But in an interview published this month, Russia’s ambassador to Pyongyang said that “hundreds of Russian soldiers” who fought in Ukraine were “undergoing rehabilitation in North Korean sanatorium and medical facilities”.
“The treatment, the care, the food – everything related to staying in North Korea was absolutely free,” the ambassador, Aleksandr Matsegora, told the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
The statements were noteworthy as one of the first public acknowledgments from either side of North Korea’s tangible support for its ally’s war effort.
“When we offered to compensate our [North Korean] friends for at least part of their expenses, they were genuinely offended and asked us never to do it again,” Matsegora said.
The extent and impact of North Korea’s role in providing medical and rehabilitation services to Russian soldiers remain unknown.
Pyongyang’s healthcare system has been strained under international sanctions, while language and cultural barriers could further hinder treatment – especially given the wide range of physical and psychological conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, that many soldiers endure.
It is unclear whether severely wounded Russian soldiers have received treatment in North Korean hospitals or if any health centres beyond Wonsan have accommodated servicemen.
Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
So far, North Korean medical outreach appears to be relatively small-scale and restricted to servicemen from Russia’s far east, which has a short land border with North Korea.
A representative of a Russian tour agency, which facilitated soldiers’ trips last summer, told the Guardian that the tours were exclusively for servicemen from Russia’s far east and accommodated only a few hundred participants.
But the representative said North Korea had the capacity to “welcome many, many more Russian soldiers”.
North Korea plans to open a long-promised “luxury beachfront” resort on the Kalma Peninsula near Wonsan this year. North Korean state media claim the complex includes about 150 hotels and can accommodate tens of thousands of visitors. Russian media have promoted it as a potential tourist destination.
Some observers suggested that Russia could be sending its military to North Korea under the cover of medical help.
“The arrival of combat-experienced Russian soldiers, particularly if they include officers or noncommissioned officers, to North Korea may allow the Russian military to work with North Korean forces and disseminate lessons from the war in Ukraine while ostensibly recuperating,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War wrote in its report last week.
Not far from where the soldiers were staying in Wonsan, North Korea also organised a summer camp for the children of Russian servicemen who died in the war in Ukraine.
During a trip to Pyongyang in June last year, Putin first mentioned the summer camp, thanking “comrade Kim Jong-un for organising the holiday of the children of killed participants of the special military operation in the Korean camp Songdowon”.
Russia has a longstanding connection with the Songdowon summer camp, which Russian children visited even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In contrast to the medical trips, Russian media have openly covered the visits to North Korean summer camps, publishing pictures of children posing in front of statues of the country’s leaders.
“Undoubtedly, one of the advantages of the trip was the lack of connectivity. It turned into a complete two-week digital detox from all outside information,” one young female participant of the summer camp in 2024 told a regional outlet in Yekaterinburg, a Russian city in the Urals.
Describing North Korean children, the girl noted that it was “very unusual to see how they marched in unison, played musical instruments as instructed and did everything together”.
Aleksei, the soldier, said he was not sure he would return to North Korea for another trip if given the chance. “I’d rather recover closer to home, somewhere more familiar,” he said.
English (US)