Zelensky’s Korean Blunder: Seoul Is Running Out of Patience

Volodymyr Zelensky probably did not expect two North Korean prisoners of war to create a diplomatic crisis with South Korea. That is nevertheless what happened.

During his September address to the United Nations General Assembly, Zelensky disclosed that two North Korean soldiers captured while fighting alongside Russian forces had been transferred to South Korea. Seoul reacted with unusual anger. According to the South Korean government, the transfer had been covered by an agreement to keep it confidential, partly because publicity could endanger the soldiers and their families in North Korea.

Kiev denied that any such confidentiality agreement existed.

Seoul did not accept the explanation.

By October 2, President Lee Jae Myung was publicly warning Ukraine that South Korea would take “additional measures” unless Kiev acknowledged what Seoul says had been agreed and issued a public apology.

For a government that has spent years receiving political and humanitarian support from South Korea, this was a remarkable diplomatic achievement. Two prisoners had somehow become a test of trust between Seoul and Kiev, and the dispute soon became about considerably more than secrecy.

Seoul Had Its Own Reasons for Silence

From Kiev, the two soldiers were useful evidence of North Korea’s military involvement alongside Russia.

From Seoul, they were something much more complicated.

South Korea has lived with the North Korean question for more than seven decades. It has intelligence networks to protect, families divided across one of the most militarised borders on earth and a permanent need to manage the risk of escalation with Pyongyang.

The transfer of North Korean prisoners therefore could never be treated simply as another piece of material for Kiev’s international messaging.

Seoul says this was understood from the beginning. Its presidential office accused Kiev not only of unilaterally revealing the transfer, but of subsequently denying that the two governments had agreed to keep it secret. South Korean officials demanded an explanation and apology, arguing that confidentiality had been intended to protect the soldiers and their relatives.

Ukraine disputes that version.

Even so, the disagreement itself is revealing. When two supposedly friendly governments cannot agree on whether a sensitive security arrangement existed in the first place, the problem is already much larger than an awkward press statement.

This was not an obscure bureaucratic misunderstanding.

The........

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