Seoul demands an explanation and apology
South Korea summoned Ukraine’s acting ambassador in Seoul on Sept. 28, escalating a diplomatic dispute over President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s public disclosure that two captured North Korean soldiers had been transferred to South Korea.
The dispute began with Zelenskyy’s Sept. 23 address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York. He said two North Korean troops captured by Ukrainian forces had recently been sent to South Korea.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung responded the next day on X, saying Ukraine had violated an agreement to keep the transfer confidential. Ukraine’s presidential office disputed that account, saying there had been no such agreement.
Seoul then issued a sharper rebuttal. Presidential communications chief Sung Ki-hong said Ukraine had initially requested confidentiality and that both governments had agreed to it. He said Kyiv’s denial had damaged trust between the two countries and fueled accusations in South Korea that Lee had lied. Seoul demanded an official explanation and apology.
A source who requested anonymity said the communications exchanged during negotiations over the transfer had been documented.
Foreign Ministry delivers formal protest
First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo called in Ukrainian acting Ambassador Andrii Veshkin and objected to what Seoul described as an announcement made without advance notice or working-level consultation.
Park said Ukraine’s claim that no confidentiality agreement existed seriously undermined trust and could harm bilateral relations. He asked Kyiv to explain and apologize for both the disclosure and its denial of the agreement, and to prevent a recurrence. Veshkin said he would convey Seoul’s position to his government.
Despite the dispute, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun had told Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha during an earlier meeting that Seoul would continue providing assistance needed by the Ukrainian people.
Pro-Russian outlets amplify the rift
As the disagreement spread, Russian and other pro-Russian media circulated an AI-generated image depicting Lee slapping Zelenskyy. Some outlets also claimed Lee had called the Ukrainian president a “murderer,” a characterization criticized as a distortion of the original context of Lee’s remarks.
Zelenskyy, born in the Soviet Union in 1978, was a comedian and actor before entering politics. His role as a fictional president in the television series “Servant of the People” helped launch his political career, and he became Ukraine’s sixth president in 2019.
His disclosure has drawn intense attention in South Korea because it combines the politically sensitive issue of North Korean involvement in the war with conflicting accounts from two governments. Possible explanations cited for the announcement include an effort to rally international support, emphasize the security implications of North Korean participation for the Korean Peninsula, encourage South Korea to provide air defense weapons and head off domestic criticism in Ukraine over why the prisoners had not been exchanged.
South Korean news videos about the dispute drew hundreds of thousands of views over several days, reflecting strong public interest in both the prisoner transfer and the widening diplomatic confrontation.
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