Hello everyone, welcome to “Current Affairs Radar”. I am Jin Ran. Please subscribe to our channel, support us, like, comment, and share.
Today’s focus: Russian military mistakenly hits North Korean soldiers, chaos on the battlefield; Chinese mercenaries mistaken for deserters, video of Taiwanese volunteers killed in action exposed; Israeli military tactics changing, interrogations conducted from all sides; Dengue fever outbreak in Guangdong, cooperation between Shi Zhengli and Zhong Nanshan.
I want to give you a heads-up that tomorrow, November 5, is the day of the US presidential election. I will be hosting a special program with Zhou Ziding from “Time Explorations” from 6 pm to 8 pm Eastern Time (equivalent to 7 am to 9 am on November 6 in China and Taiwan) to discuss interesting observations and the latest developments on the US election. The show will be broadcast live on both “Current Affairs Radar” and “Time Explorations” online channels. We hope to see you there.
In a previous segment, I discussed how Kim Jong Un sent North Korean soldiers to participate in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Recent developments have shed more light on the situations I mentioned before.
According to a report from the South Korean newspaper “Hankyoreh” on November 3, they obtained the agreement reached between North Korea and Russia before the deployment of soldiers. In addition to the previously mentioned $2,000 monthly salary provided by Russia to each North Korean soldier, Russia also agreed to annually provide North Korea with 600,000 to 700,000 tons of rice to alleviate the current food shortage in North Korea. Another key point is that Russia agreed to provide “advanced space technology” to enhance North Korea’s long-range rocket capabilities. One of the most attractive conditions for Kim Jong Un is that if a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula between North and South, the Russian military has promised direct support to North Korea.
This is why Kim Jong Un agreed to send tens of thousands of soldiers with no experience in flat terrain combat to the Russia-Ukraine battlefield. It exemplifies the typical thinking and actions of a dictator: sending troops to the battlefield has no relevance to slogans like “fighting fascism” or “defending the homeland.”
The real motivation behind this is that dictators can gain a large amount of money to continue their indulgent lifestyles, alleviate food crises that affect political stability, and ensure their power is not overthrown in the future. To a dictator, with these gains, the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers become expendable – what does it matter if thousands die? They can always encourage the common people to have more children like the Chinese Communist Party does.
I previously mentioned the first ground battle between North Korean and Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, where approximately 40 North Korean soldiers only had one survivor who was captured by the Ukrainian military.
After this battle, Aman, a representative from the Lithuanian NGO BlueYellow, gave a startling analysis in a written interview with the Associated Press. This Lithuanian organization has close ties with the Ukrainian military and has been providing a large amount of drones, vehicles, night vision equipment, and other supplies, with opportunities to be in contact with frontline positions. Aman stated that in the northern part of the Kursk region, there have been several minor conflicts between North Korean soldiers and Ukrainian forces recently.
The first battle where North Korea suffered 40 casualties was likely caused by mistakes from the Russian artillery. During the engagement, Russian artillery misjudged the location and inadvertently struck the North Korean soldiers sent by themselves. In other words, the majority of the 40 North Korean casualties were due to the Russian artillery fire.
Aman analyzed that normally, both enemy and friendly artillery cease fire to avoid friendly fire once hostilities begin. This incident clearly shows that in the eyes of the Russian military, North Korean soldiers are indeed cannon fodder, with no regard for their safety. I previously aired a video showing three armored vehicles attacking Ukrainian positions, dropping off soldiers and then hastily retreating without providing cover or support.
I initially believed it was a Russian offensive, but it was revealed by the Ukrainians that the discarded soldiers in the video were North Korean soldiers, and the armored vehicles were operated by Russian troops. The incident took place in a village near the Ukraine-Russian border in the Kursk battlefield. Military experts concluded that the soldiers in the video initially hesitated and failed to advance after disembarking, while the armored vehicles did not fulfill the responsibility of supporting the infantry and instead left the area. This lack of coordinated training between North Korean and Russian armored troops led to confusion for North Korean soldiers upon entering the battlefield, as the Russian armored forces did not treat them as comrades in arms.
Recent events suggest that once North Korean forces entered the frontlines, the Russian military began conserving its strength by using North Korean soldiers as cannon fodder, especially in the most dangerous frontline areas of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. There were even incidents of indiscriminate artillery attacks following North Korean soldiers provoking Ukrainian forces at close range.
In fact, this strategy of the Russian military goes beyond the North Korean army and extends to foreign mercenaries as well, as revealed in a recent livestream by a Chinese mercenary known as “Cricket.”
Interestingly, this “Cricket” echoes the brainwashed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party, claiming to fight fascism on Ukrainian soil. However, historically, fascists have been the aggressors rather than the ones being invaded. The “Cricket” then shifts the narrative, expressing feeling aggrieved and cold-hearted. He described being sent to the frontlines without return, facing hunger and thirst, being abandoned by comrades outside cover during combat, and being accused of desertion despite trying to report on the condition of wounded comrades after a difficult journey on foot.
In a previous episode, I reported on the second Taiwanese volunteer soldier killed in action in Ukraine. Now, a video has emerged showing Wu Zhongda before his death riding in an armored vehicle, with gunfire audible nearby. Wu Zhongda’s final message to his comrades before going into battle was unexpectedly, “If I die in battle, don’t bring me back!”
Wu Zhongda had served for many years in the Taiwanese Army’s Special Operations Command. On November 3, Taiwan announced that as the fifth-largest exporter, it had completely halted the supply of any machine tools to Russia. Since March of this year, Taiwan has strengthened its export control to Russia, with the top five suppliers of machine tools for weapons production in Russia being China, Germany, South Korea, Turkey, and Taiwan.
Israel seems to have changed its tactics recently. Instead of precision strikes leaving no survivors, they are now capturing individuals. In a previous segment, I mentioned how the Israeli Navy Special Forces captured a Hezbollah general along the Lebanese coast. Surprisingly, on November 3, Israel released a video from two weeks ago showing a raid in Syria resulting in an apprehension, shedding light on why the Hezbollah general was captured.
These two events are part of a chain reaction. Israel discovered an Iranian intelligence chief responsible for transporting weapons between Syria and Lebanon. The Israeli Special Forces went to Syria, captured the Iranian intelligence chief, and during interrogation, he revealed the location of the Hezbollah general based near the Lebanese coast.
Subsequently, Israel exploited the situation and captured the Hezbollah general in Lebanon. It remains to be seen how much more information the captured Hezbollah general will provide under interrogation and where Israel will target next in the coming days.
Israel’s policy of relentless pursuit and retribution against its enemies, a tradition from chasing down Nazis, applies to every level of threat, from top leadership to terrorists harming civilians. One of the most infamous incidents was the terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel last October, where three Hamas members captured and killed a 22-year-old German-Israeli woman abducted during a music festival. On November 3, Israel confirmed that all three terrorists were found and killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.
Israel’s operations to eliminate Hezbollah in Lebanon are ongoing. On November 4, the Israeli military released a video showing the destruction of a Hezbollah base after its discovery. The scene was truly breathtaking.
While the Israeli military is conducting sweeps against both upper and lower-level Hezbollah forces, it is crucial to remember that over half of the Hezbollah forces remain in northern Lebanon. Videos captured by the Israeli military show a Hezbollah base firing rockets at Israeli forces, while precise Israeli bombs strike back.
Beware! Recently, there has been a major outbreak of dengue fever in Guangdong, China. On November 3, official reports stated that Guangdong Province added 1,785 new cases of dengue fever between October 21 and October 27. Following the typical modus operandi of the Chinese Communist Party, concealing and distorting information from top to bottom is a pathological norm, making it appear more dangerous than the dengue fever and similar viruses themselves.
People in northern regions may not be familiar with dengue fever as it is a tropical disease. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pain, accompanied by a characteristic rash. Globally, approximately 20,000 people die from dengue fever every year. We should be cautious, not solely because of the dengue fever outbreak in Guangdong, but due to the sudden reappearance of Shi Zhengli, the disappeared researcher from Wuhan Institute of Virology, who recently joined the Guangzhou Virology Institute led by Zhong Nanshan. Zhong Nanshan and Shi Zhengli joining forces – should the world be afraid?
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