May 4 (UPI) -- On the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield, the moment a North Korean soldier finds himself surrounded, his hand does not reach for his rifle -- it reaches for a grenade pin.
The world's media calls this fanaticism. I see it differently. I was trained the same way. I recited the same oaths. I sang the same songs.
In North Korea, I served in the Korean People's Army for more than three years. I am not writing this to condemn the dead. I am writing to explain why they made that choice -- and how that choice was engineered to feel like the only natural one -- through the internal logic of the world I once lived inside.
Logic planted before birth
A North Korean soldier does not first encounter the concept of "dying for the Supreme Leader" when he enlists. It begins in kindergarten. Children learn the song, "We will defend General Kim Jong-un with our lives" before they learn to read the Korean alphabet.
