Kyiv is learning the hard way that support from its partners — however natural and right(eous) it might seem — is increasingly conditional on their domestic (political) considerations. At the core of the diplomatic scandal unfolding between Seoul and Kyiv are the North Korean (DPRK) prisoners of war (POWs) captured by Ukraine and recently transferred to South Korea.
At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine was rather successful in appealing to foreign and far-away audiences with tailored messages on why they should support its fight against the aggression. The diplomatic fallout with South Korea suggests that some skill and calibration have been lost.
What Is at Stake
At one point, Ukraine and South Korea seemed, at least from a European perspective, to be natural, like-minded allies sharing not only values but enemies. That idea only became entrenched once the North Korean regime began first supplying arms and then sending troops — at once giving Russia a lifeline in its war of aggression and training the DPRK army to fight a modern war with modern weapons. To say nothing of the cash and tech flows to Pyongyang.
Seoul has been sympathetic to Ukraine’s war of defence but not supportive of its war effort — at least, not to the degree Kyiv would have wanted. Seoul promised $2.3 bn to help Ukraine recover through humanitarian aid, development grants, and long-term loans. This summer, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung pledged $100 mn in comprehensive support for Ukraine’s reconstruction during his first official meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky on the margins of the NATO summit in Ankara.
South Korea, a major arms exporter, has so far declined to break with its longstanding policy and provide Ukraine, as a country engaged in an active war, with lethal weapons. But since North Korea effectively entered that conflict on the side of the aggressor, Seoul signalled a potential phased readjustment.
Kyiv has been seeking South Korean air defence capabilities. They would be a critical asset now, as Ukraine lacks US Patriot interceptors and other air defence systems, while Russia has been firing ballistic missiles, some of them North Korean. Those strikes on Ukrainian cities have grown steadily in number, frequency, destructiveness, and lethality.
The POW question is acutely sensitive for both nations on personal, political, and national-security levels, and as this article will show, sensitive in strikingly similar ways.
Whether Seoul would ever agree to sell missile interceptors has always remained a question. But the political prospects of acquiring Cheongung-II systems have now been significantly degraded by a diplomatic scandal seemingly of Kyiv’s own making.
The POW question is acutely sensitive for both nations on personal, political, and national-security levels, and as this article will show, sensitive in strikingly similar ways. Seoul’s concerns should have been felt and understood in Kyiv. Yet that relationship went in the opposite direction, driven by miscommunication and unwillingness to retreat, largely on the part of the president and his office.
It Began with a Statement by the President
In January 2025, President Zelensky and the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) announced that Ukrainian troops had captured two North Korean servicemen in Russia’s Kursk region. According to the SBU, the interrogation was conducted via interpreters in cooperation with South Korean intelligence, suggesting at least some form of cooperation between the two states from the very beginning.
It is worth noting that, also from the very beginning, Ukraine did not keep the North Korean POWs’ identities secret: the Special Operations Forces released footage showing the capture. At that time, it seemed like an opportunity to draw global attention to the direct, extended involvement of the DPRK in Russia’s aggression in Europe, emphasise the consolidation of the ‘axis of upheaval‘, and call for a united front to respond. Yet, in the case of North Koreans, such publicity did more than breach the prisoners’ right to protection against public curiosity: North Korean soldiers are conditioned to take their own lives rather than be captured; those who fail to do so may see their immediate families in the DPRK punished by the Kim regime in their place.
One of the captured DPRK soldiers had a forged military identity card issued in the name of a real resident of the Russian Republic of Tyva. In a video circulated by President Zelensky, the POW confirmed his identity papers were fake and recalled being wounded in action, immobilised, left on the battlefield, and later evacuated by the Ukrainian military. The President explained his communications goal at the time: “No one in the world should be left in any doubt that the Russian army depends on military assistance from the DPRK.” He also added that Ukraine would “hand over to Kim Jong Un his own people,” but only if he could arrange their exchange for Ukrainian POWs in Russia; he even speculated that more North Korean troops might soon be captured.
From the very beginning, publicity did more than breach the prisoners’ right to protection against public curiosity.
Repatriation to the DPRK, however, would have doomed North Korean POWs to persecution for high treason, resulting in brutal punishment — effectively a death sentence — and thus could have run up against an exception to the repatriation of POWs, as defined by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
That arrangement never came to be. Nor were there further reports of more North Korean troops captured alive. The two men, both in their 20s, expressed a desire to defect to South Korea and were put in touch with an activist group in the South. The government in Seoul notified Kyiv of its willingness to accept the POWs; the EU was reportedly open to mediating. The issue remained high on the bilateral agenda. A member of the Defence Committee of South Korea’s National Assembly visited the men in Ukraine; he also met with the chair of the Ukrainian parliament’s subcommittee on human rights to discuss the transfer, saying that the solution required “political decision-making and coordination between the leaders of both countries.”
Away from the public eye, coordination did take place, and the world came to learn that Kyiv had transferred the DPRK POWs to Seoul, arranged through direct dialogue between the two capitals. The two men arrived in South Korea sometime in mid-September, in secret.
And It Escalated with a Statement by the President
Speaking at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York in September 2026, Zelensky announced that Ukraine had recently transferred two North Korean POWs to South Korea. He recounted that one of them had attempted to take his own life as soon as he realised he had been captured — precisely how the totalitarian regime in the DPRK conditions its soldiers to behave; this should serve as a warning of the threat that propaganda, regardless of whether it originates in Pyongyang or Moscow, poses to global peace.
That announcement was unexpected and unwelcome news to South Korea. Reportedly, Kyiv notified Seoul that the soldiers would be mentioned in Zelensky’s address to the UNGA — but not the fact of their transfer. Seoul immediately demanded Ukraine apologise for Zelensky’s disclosure and accused Kyiv of “announcing a falsehood.” Korean President Lee Jae Myung, too, asked for an official apology and regretted that Kyiv’s actions were a “breach of a non-disclosure agreement.” South Korean intelligence suspects that Zelensky may have decided to disclose the transfer, believing it would generate public support in South Korea for providing Ukraine with weapons. Analysts concurred that Kyiv might have expected increased military support when the POW transfer was arranged.
Ukraine clearly did not anticipate such a reaction from Seoul either. At first, Kyiv sought to rebut the accusations. President Zelensky’s communications adviser denied that Ukraine had breached any confidentiality agreement with South Korea. Responding (but in the comments section) to a Facebook post that accused Zelensky of hyping, the advisor went a step further in defending Kyiv’s handling of the incident, saying that “[…] it would be wrong to conceal where particular prisoners end up.” The same idea was echoed by Zelensky’s office in a comment to South Korean media.
Kyiv later acknowledged the misstep: the Korean foreign ministry received an apology in response to its official complaint, which, however, fell short of Seoul’s expectations. The Korean presidential office said Ukraine’s subsequent denials that there had been an agreement to keep the matter confidential were inaccurate and had damaged trust between the two governments.
To be sufficient, the apology would need to come from President Zelensky. But now, further steps need to be taken to end the diplomatic fallout, let alone begin rebuilding that trust. Kyiv, according to Seoul, has failed to take a “forward-looking measure.” In the meantime, South Korea has recalled its ambassador to Ukraine and withdrawn part of its diplomatic staff from Kyiv, citing the absence of “positive steps” to settle the dispute, as well as the threat of Russian air strikes. What remains is necessary diplomatic communication, led by the chargé d’affaires.
It Did Not Have to Happen
Not only could the aftershocks have been avoided, but this diplomatic scandal should never have happened in the first place.
President Lee Jae Myung called the matter one of national dignity. He also said that affairs of state “must not be conducted for the benefit or the popularity of the government of the day or of the person in power,” contrasting that principle with those who, in his telling, would have advertised the transfer to the world to take credit for it (and who find his government’s insistence on confidentiality not merely incomprehensible but unobjectionable to breach). This should have been clear to the Ukrainian government, which maintains the same approach to all matters connected to POW exchanges with Russia.
Ukraine does not reveal the number of its POWs held by Russia, but has so far managed to return 9 726 of its citizens. In addition to the horrific abuse Ukrainian troops suffer every day they spend in Russian captivity, their families, too, are targeted for exploitation by Moscow. Ukraine knows too well why disclosing the identities of POWs, as well as the fact of their capture or release, is dangerous to the (former) prisoners themselves, their families, and those still in the enemy’s captivity. It also risks jeopardising future exchange arrangements. That is why the Ukrainian authorities do not share this sensitive information, and appeal to others not to.
Not only could the aftershocks have been avoided, but this diplomatic scandal should never have happened in the first place.
In an apparent split from the Ukrainian government’s own sensitive approach and in light of Zelensky’s disclosure at the UNGA, a South Korean lawmaker said that, from the outset, the Ukrainian side proactively requested strict confidentiality, citing concerns about the impact on prisoner exchanges with Moscow. Seoul also pointed out that Kyiv itself wanted to keep the transfer secret, fearing accusations of failure to secure the release of Ukrainian POWs in return. Likewise, President Lee reportedly faced criticism at home from the opposition for allegedly covering up the transfer to appease Pyongyang.
On a peninsula divided for over seven decades by a ceasefire line that functions as a border, many families remain separated across the demilitarised zone (DMZ), with almost no means of contact. The suffering of ordinary people — once one’s own countrymen and women — at the hands of the brutal regime is a deeply personal humanitarian matter to be handled with extreme caution. Failing to show enough care for those concerns wins neither public nor government support. That, too, should have been easy to understand in Kyiv, as many Ukrainian people remain trapped in the temporarily occupied territories (TOT). Ukrainian politicians have themselves faced domestic backlash for ill-thought-out remarks with regard to the population in the TOT.
Lessons to Learn
Beyond national security and personal or humanitarian considerations, Ukraine has been learning that its partners’ ability to support it economically and militarily depends on the complexities of their national politics, as well as the ‘pro-Ukrainian’ governments’ ability to navigate them. In the South Korean context, beyond President Lee’s own approval ratings, that would imply prospects of relations between North and South warming up and perhaps resulting in a summit at some point. A transfer of POWs — which could be perceived as a hostile move by Pyongyang — hardly contributes to a rapprochement unless handled discreetly.
A series of conflicts between Kyiv and Poland over historical memory, another matter of national dignity for an ally Ukraine depends on, is further evidence of that danger: an ill-advised step or remark becomes blown out of proportion, making it difficult, and politically costly, for both parties to backtrack.
For domestic reasons and security environments of their own, political forces in most countries increasingly question the economic soundness of continuing aid to Ukraine, pointing to the benefits of returning to Russian markets, particularly purchasing Russian energy and ‘normalising’ relations with Russia in general. Ukraine cannot afford to feed those sentiments politically (or feed Russian propaganda, for that matter), and should ideally learn from them, as its European allies enter the election season and face their own dilemmas.
Global-south countries stand a lot to lose — far more than Seoul — should they make a deal with Kyiv, believing it to be confidential, only to learn that confidentiality had been breached.
What’s more, the feud now requires European diplomats, already uneasy about its implications for defence cooperation, to intervene and limit the damage: “for Ukraine, but also for our own security in Europe,” as the Dutch ambassador put it.
On the narrower issue of POWs, too, Kyiv is sending the wrong signal. Russia has recruited foreign nationals, many from the global south where Ukraine’s diplomacy has struggled; many are in POW camps in Ukraine waiting for their fate to be decided. Meanwhile, the respective capitals are all watching the fallout and weighing cooperation with Kyiv. Kenya, for instance, has recently approached Kyiv with a request to change the status of its five citizens held in a Ukrainian camp, from POWs to victims of human trafficking, and to repatriate the men.
Global-south countries have much tighter links to, and dependencies on, Russia. They all stand a lot to lose — far more than Seoul — should they make a deal with Kyiv, believing it to be confidential, only to learn that confidentiality had been breached.
Russia, too, must be learning from the scandal: Moscow will capitalise on this quarrel to portray Kyiv as an untrustworthy partner, arrogant and inconsiderate towards others’ national interests and sensitivities. Russia has, for instance, already inserted itself into the South Korean debate through amplification in traditional media, as well as by circulating AI-generated imagery, in an inflammatory information campaign. It will not be the first time Russia has used the POW issue to undermine international support for Ukraine’s war effort.[i]
[i] See: Tetiana Fedosiuk, On Prisoners of War and More: Institutional Design and Operational Reality (ICDS, forthcoming 2026).
Views expressed in ICDS publications are those of the author(s).