South Korea Demands Apology After Ukraine Publicly Reveals Secret Transfer of North Korean POWs
South Korea’s presidential office is seeking an explanation and apology from Ukraine after Volodymyr Zelensky used a UN speech to disclose the transfer of two captured North Korean soldiers to Seoul, a move Seoul says broke a confidentiality agreement.
A clandestine prisoner handover aimed at protecting two North Korean soldiers has turned into a public rift between Seoul and Kyiv.
South Korea’s presidential office has demanded an official explanation and apology from Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed at the UN General Assembly that two captured North Korean soldiers had been transferred to South Korea.
The two men were captured by Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region in January 2025 while fighting with Russian units, according to South Korean reporting. Their presence on the battlefield underlined Pyongyang’s involvement on Russia’s side.
Seoul says Ukraine itself requested that the transfer remain confidential. According to South Korea, Kyiv feared domestic criticism that it had given up possible leverage for prisoner exchanges with Russia by sending the North Koreans abroad rather than holding them.
South Korean officials say they agreed to the transfer and pledged to protect the men’s safety and the security of their families in North Korea. That position aligns with Seoul’s longstanding argument that North Korean escapees and defectors, and their relatives, face serious risk from the regime’s security services.
Ukraine denies some of South Korea’s characterisation and rejects the idea that it violated any understanding, but the dispute has not yet been fully resolved in public.
The case puts Ukraine in the middle of Korean Peninsula politics. Transferring North Korean prisoners to South Korea touches directly on the unresolved state of war between the two Koreas and on Pyongyang’s likely response when its personnel end up in an enemy state.
For the two former soldiers, the UN disclosure may increase the danger to family members still in the North, since their move to South Korea is now widely known.
For South Korea, the incident raises questions at home about how it handles high‑profile North Korean arrivals and about the balance between sensitive security cooperation with partners and domestic transparency.
How quickly and publicly Seoul and Kyiv can smooth over this disagreement—whether through a joint statement, back‑channel assurances or visible policy adjustments—will show how much strain the episode has put on their broader relationship, including future cooperation over North Korean involvement in Russia’s war.
Sources
- OSINT