Seoul Warns of ‘Further Action’ as Ukraine POW Dispute Escalates
SEOUL —South Korea’s president has threatened unspecified “further action” against Ukraine if Kyiv does not publicly apologize for disclosing the transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war to the South, a rare diplomatic rupture between two governments that have broadly aligned against Russia’s invasion.
President Lee Jae Myung said the disclosure by Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky at the UN General Assembly last week had embarrassed Seoul and undercut a transfer that South Korea says was meant to remain secret. Zelensky revealed that two North Korean soldiers captured while fighting for Russia had been sent to South Korea.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, sought to lower the temperature on Thursday, calling the episode a “diplomatic misunderstanding” and saying Kyiv was working to resolve it. “For us, South Korea is an important country,” he told Ukrainian media, expressing hope for “momentum, continuation, and concrete results.”
Lee rejected that framing in a post on X, saying the dispute was not a bureaucratic mix-up but a matter of “the dignity of the Korean people and the nation.”
The competing accounts have turned a sensitive humanitarian and diplomatic matter into a public test of trust. Lee’s office said last week that it was Ukraine that requested the move be kept secret—partly to protect the North Koreans’ families and partly because Kyiv wanted to avoid criticism that it had given up an opportunity to exchange the soldiers for Ukrainian prisoners of war. Zelensky’s office responded that the two countries had no such agreement to keep the transfer confidential, further escalating the standoff.
The disclosure also handed South Korea’s opposition a fresh line of attack. Lee has faced heavy domestic criticism since Zelensky’s remarks, with opponents accusing him of covering up the transfer to appease Pyongyang. The two soldiers had earlier told local media they wanted to be sent to South Korea, making their fate a highly charged issue on both sides of the border.
In comments to Ukrainian media, Sybiha said he hoped the situation would be resolved “in the very near future.” “We are working on it,” he said. “For us, South Korea is an important country. And I really hope for momentum, continuation, and concrete results that we are truly achieving with them.”
Lee responded by accusing Kyiv of “attempting to provoke a war on the Korean Peninsula.” “We express serious regret that, instead of acknowledging the facts of the agreement and apologizing, they are talking about an imminent military clash between the North and South,” he said in the post.
Seoul has been sympathetic to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, but it has adhered to a longstanding policy of not providing lethal weapons to any country engaged in active war. That balancing act has grown more difficult as North Korea deepens military cooperation with Russia, including by sending troops to support Moscow’s war effort.
For Seoul, the row complicates a carefully calibrated position: backing Ukraine diplomatically and economically while avoiding direct lethal aid and managing an increasingly assertive North Korea. It also puts the spotlight on the two soldiers, whose transfer had been kept quiet until Zelensky’s UN remarks.
Seoul’s warning of “further action” leaves the scope of any response deliberately vague, giving both sides room to escalate or de-escalate depending on Kyiv’s next move. A public apology could quiet the immediate dispute, but it would also set a precedent for how wartime disclosures involving North Korean personnel are handled. Without one, the episode risks spilling into broader cooperation between South Korea and Ukraine at a moment when both are watching Pyongyang’s growing role in Russia’s war.