South Korea warns Ukraine of further action over prisoner transfer disclosure

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has warned that Seoul will take further action if Ukraine does not acknowledge what South Korea says was a confidentiality agreement over the transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war and apologise publicly. He did not specify what action Seoul might take. [1] [4]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address to the UN General Assembly last month that Ukraine had recently sent the prisoners to South Korea. South Korea’s intelligence service says Ukraine had asked for confidentiality during early talks because publicity could affect prisoner-exchange negotiations, and that the two sides agreed through diplomatic channels to keep the transfer private. Zelenskyy’s communications adviser, Dmytro Lytvyn, has denied that there was such an agreement. [2] [5] [6]

Lee also accused Kyiv of trying to provoke war on the Korean Peninsula and criticised what he described as talk of an imminent clash between North and South Korea. Zelenskyy’s published UN address discussed the wider dangers of Russia’s war and North Korea’s military capabilities; it did not call for conflict on the peninsula. [1] [2]