COVER STORY Zelenskyy's disclosure of NK POW transfer raises risks for families: experts

For two North Korean soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces in January 2025 while fighting for Russia, their recent arrival in South Korea, where they requested to go, offers freedom and the prospect of a new life.

But for their families left behind in the North, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s public disclosure of the transfer may have heightened potentially life-threatening risks, experts said Wednesday.

They say the relatives may already have become vulnerable when the soldiers' capture was made public in January 2025, but the Kim Jong-un regime's retaliation against them could be harsher after Zelenskyy disclosed the soldiers' transfer to South Korea during his U.N. General Assembly speech on Sept. 23.

Forced relocation, loss of official positions and tighter surveillance are among the possible consequences cited by the experts, although the families’ whereabouts and any punishments remain unconfirmed.

“North Korea probably had already banished the families to remote mountainous areas and stripped those in official positions of their posts,” said Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector who heads the World Institute for North Korean Studies. He explained that Pyongyang would view the soldiers’ capture as disobedience of the order to kill themselves rather than surrender.

Ahn said that when Zelenskyy announced the transfer on the U.N. stage, the report would have gone directly to the North Korean leader. "So we should assume their suffering became somewhat more severe ... They may have been sent to mining areas or pushed further down the social hierarchy,” he added.

Yang Moo-jin, former president of the University of North Korean Studies, also said that Zelenskyy’s disclosure could intensify the threats the soldiers’ families already faced.

“Of course Zelenskyy’s remarks increased the risk," he said. "Given past cases, isn’t that a reasonable inference?”

He said the Ukrainian president, through the disclosure, may have hoped to show the world that the country took humanitarian actions, but that this could backfire.

Yang said the soldiers should have been asked whether they wanted their arrival to be made public. “If they do not want it disclosed, it should not be disclosed,” he said.

He said defectors usually do not make their identities public, "not for their own safety but for the safety of their families remaining in the North."

Some defectors, meanwhile, said the disclosure and international attention may help protect the families for the time being, although they may face harsher punishments later.

"The public announcement by the Ukrainian president on the international stage may have forced North Korea to be more cautious, so it works as a measure of protection through international attention,” said Choi Min-kyeong, head of the NK Imprisonment Victims’ Family Association.

Seo Jae-pyong, president of the Association for North Korean Defectors, said Pyongyang had known about both the capture and efforts to bring the soldiers to South Korea. So any retaliation on the families was more likely tied to the soldiers’ capture itself than to Zelenskyy’s subsequent announcement.

“Making it public therefore does not mean North Korea would suddenly punish families it otherwise would not have punished,” he said. “With international interest already focused on the prisoners, their transfer would eventually have become known anyway [even without Zelenskyy's remarks].”