South Korea warns Ukraine of measures over POW dispute

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Friday threatened unspecified measures against Ukraine unless Kyiv acknowledged a confidentiality agreement that Seoul says covered the transfer of two captured North Korean soldiers and issued an apology.

That is according to Reuters, CE Report quotes Ukrinform.

"If the refusal to acknowledge the facts and issue a public apology continues, we will take additional measures," Lee wrote on X, without specifying what measures he meant.

Seoul and Kyiv have been locked in a diplomatic dispute since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced at the United Nations General Assembly last month that Ukraine had transferred two North Korean prisoners of war captured while fighting for Russia to South Korea.

Seoul subsequently accused Kyiv of breaching an agreement to keep the transfer confidential to protect the soldiers, while Ukrainian officials denied any such agreement existed.

Ukraine was seeking to mend ties with South Korea, Ukrainian media reported, quoting Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.

"I would not like to call this an incident. Let's say, it's a diplomatic misunderstanding," Sybiha said.

A senior ⁠South Korean Foreign Ministry official told reporters on Friday that the countries' foreign ministers had been discussing how Kyiv could address Seoul's concerns, including a possible apology, according to South Korean media reports.

Foreign Minister Cho Hyun and Sybiha had been in direct contact and were discussing what level of response Seoul was seeking and what Ukraine could accept, while taking into account Ukraine's wartime circumstances and the need to avoid causing either side a loss of ⁠face, according to the reports.

The dispute comes at a sensitive time for Lee's administration, which has sought to reduce tensions with North Korea and is also dealing with the political fallout from a recent landmine incident in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas.

Cho Han-bum, a senior fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, suggested that possible additional measures could concern support that South Korea already provides to Ukraine, including humanitarian, financial and reconstruction assistance.

"Ukraine has more to lose than South Korea because it is receiving support from Seoul," Cho said.

South ⁠Korea has provided humanitarian and financial assistance to Ukraine since Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion and in July pledged an additional $100 million in non-lethal support on the sidelines of the NATO summit.

"However, neither side benefits from a prolonged confrontation," Cho said, noting that South Korea relies on Ukraine for information related to North Korea's military activities.

The South Korean presidential office earlier expressed "deep regret" over Ukraine's alleged denial of an agreement on nondisclosure of information concerning the transfer of two North Korean POWs to South Korea.

On September 25, Ukrainian presidential communications advisor Dmytro Lytvyn wrote on Facebook that there had been no nondisclosure agreement and that it would be wrong to conceal where the prisoners were being transferred. In response to a query from Yonhap, the Presidential Office explained that Kyiv had disclosed only the fact of the transfer, without revealing details of the process.

Photo: president.go.kr