A rebirth of the Kursk tragedy

The blood shed by North Korean boys may turn into armory pointing directly at us.

Kim Jung-haThe author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo. The southwestern Russian city of Kursk bears the vestige of modern warfare’s madness and insanities. Hitler’s Nazi Germany, humiliated by a devastating defeat by the Soviet Red Army at the Battle of Stalingrad, readied another full-scale onslaught as its last chance to regain dominance on the Eastern Front during World War II. A year’s worth of fighting had created a westward protruding land on the battlefield, at the Russian city of Kursk. Nazi Germany planned to encircle the salient — known as the Kursk Bulge — as its strategic location. On July 5, 1943, Germany unleashed an artillery assault on the northern and southern flanks of the salient, armed with 900,000-manned troops, 3,000 tanks and 2,000 aircrafts — all its available military power on the Eastern Front. Hitler thought this size of his military forces could easily take Kursk, but he was wrong, as Stalin upped the stake, overdriving ammunition by 1.9-million troops, 6,000 tanks and 3,000 aircrafts.

The single largest-ever battle played out for a month over an area as large as Yeouido in Seoul, with hundreds of tanks locking horns and exposed soldiers torn apart in the crossfire. Since both the Nazi Germans and Soviets were both under brutal totalitarian regimes, lives of their enlisted men mattered little. German rank and file had more war experience, but they were overwhelmingly outnumbered by Soviet armor. The Germans eventually retreated after losing 200,000 soldiers and missing 600,000 of them. Despite its victory, the Soviet Union is projected to have born a greater loss.

The battle in Kursk served as a crucial turning point in World War II, giving the control over the Eastern Front to the Soviets while pushing the demoralized Nazis toward their collapse. The war in the Soviet Union could have been delayed if the Nazis fortified their defense line. Hitler’s underestimation of the Soviets’ mobilization power resulted in catastrophic human losses.

Kursk’s history of tragedy continued after World War II. In 1993, Russia christened its soon-to-be commissioned Oscar II-class nuclear-powered submarine “Kursk” in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of its triumph in the Battle of Kursk. The submarine with 18,000-ton displacement capacity carrying 24 nuclear warheads was the pride of the Russian Navy. But the vessel sank 108 meters (354 feet) below the surface of the Barents Sea after a torpedo explosion during a naval drill on Aug. 12, 2000.

The disaster, caused by a combination of poor equipment maintenance due to budgetary shortage, the usual Russian military’s safety negligence and substandard design, was exacerbated by Moscow’s initial cover-up and refusal of foreign rescue support. Russians eventually accepted search assistance from British and Norwegian naval forces, but when they finally located the vessel and opened its hatch on Aug. 20, 118 crew all but perished. A poignant note was found in the bosom of Lt. Capt. Dimitry Kolesnikov: “There are 23 of us in Compartment 9. I am listing the names of those who wish to be found alive.”

The renewed tragedy in the land of Kursk won’t be foreign to us as we know some 10,000 North Koreans are deployed in Russia to fight as mercenaries in Kursk, which is currently occupied by the Ukrainian Army. Some already report of North Korean casualties. Despite the generational difference and change of times, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a dictator as merciless as Hitler and Stalin. He is trading young lives for Russian military technology. The North Korean mercenaries are in their teens or early 20s with no experience abroad or on real battlefields. It is unknown how many will return home unscathed. We cannot imagine what goes through the minds of those boys who have been forced to fight in an unfamiliar war in a distant land in their final moments.

But we cannot afford to be sentimental. The blood shed by North Korean soldiers may turn into armory pointing directly at us. If Russia hands over its technological know-how in military satellites, tactical nukes and nuclear submarines, our security front could be in a deep crisis. We must work closely with our allies to find effective countermeasures. The Kursk tragedy is no longer a foreign affair.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.