South Korea demands apology from Ukraine over disclosure of North Korean POW transfer

South Korea has demanded a formal explanation and apology from Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelensky told the United Nations General Assembly that Kyiv had transferred two captured North Korean soldiers to Seoul, a disclosure South Korean officials say broke a confidentiality agreement between the two governments and threatens to complicate a relationship built up over more than a year of South Korean support for Ukraine's war effort.

The dispute erupted after Zelensky, addressing world leaders during the general debate of the UN General Assembly's 81st session on September 23, announced that Ukraine had "recently sent two North Korean prisoners of war to the Republic of Korea." South Korea's presidential office says it had explicitly asked Ukraine to keep the transfer out of public view, citing the safety of the soldiers and relatives they left behind in North Korea.

A quiet handover, made public

Seong Ghi-hong, South Korea's senior presidential secretary for public relations, issued a formal statement on September 27 demanding Kyiv account for the disclosure, calling it "an act that seriously undermines trust" between the two governments. President Lee Jae Myung had already voiced his displeasure in a social media post two days earlier, calling the episode "deeply regrettable."

"I do not know what circumstances led the Ukrainian side to disclose the matter despite the confidentiality agreement, but it is deeply regrettable," Lee wrote, adding that it had been "appropriate in every aspect not to disclose" the transfer.

Seoul's government says the two sides agreed verbally, after months of back-channel discussions, to keep the repatriation confidential. Presidential officials say Ukraine notified them shortly before Zelensky's UN address that he might reference the transfer, but that the warning was vague and framed only as a possibility, not a certainty. The Korea Herald reported that Lee described the repatriation of North Korean prisoners as "an extremely sensitive issue with serious implications for diplomacy, national security, and the stability of the Korean Peninsula," underscoring why Seoul wanted the matter handled quietly.

The numbers behind the standoff

• Two North Korean soldiers were captured by Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk region in January 2025 — the first North Korean troops taken alive since Pyongyang began deploying forces to fight for Russia in late 2024.
• North Korea has sent roughly 14,000 to 15,000 troops to support Russia's war effort since then, with more than 6,000 reported killed, according to figures cited by Ukrainian and South Korean officials.
• Zelensky's disclosure came eight months after the soldiers' capture and roughly two months after Lee and Zelensky's first bilateral summit, held on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara in July.

Two soldiers who did not want to go home

Both men reportedly expressed a wish to resettle in South Korea rather than be returned to North Korea, a preference that has shaped the quiet diplomacy around their case since their capture. Zelensky told the General Assembly that capturing North Korean troops alive has been rare because of how fiercely they resist being taken prisoner, recounting that one of the two men tried to kill himself rather than be captured and "was shocked that fate did not let him die."

South Korea's intelligence services have handled a small but growing number of North Korean soldiers who signaled a desire to defect after capture in the Russia-Ukraine war, treating each case as diplomatically delicate given Pyongyang's history of retaliating against defectors' families still living in North Korea. That sensitivity is central to Seoul's objection: officials argue that publicizing the men's whereabouts and status could endanger them, complicate any future prisoner exchanges with Moscow or Pyongyang, and provoke North Korea at a moment when Seoul is separately trying to reopen dialogue channels with the North.

Kyiv pushes back

Ukrainian officials reject the characterization that they violated a formal pact. Dmytro Lytvyn, a senior aide to Zelensky, told reporters that Ukraine is "an open country" and that it would have been strange to hand over the soldiers in total secrecy, arguing that Kyiv disclosed only the bare fact of the transfer and none of the operational detail Seoul says it wanted protected.

The disagreement has become a genuine strain on a relationship Seoul has cultivated carefully since South Korea began ramping up non-lethal support for Ukraine's reconstruction. Alexander Hynd, a Korea researcher at the University of Melbourne, told CNN the episode damages trust between the governments and makes it less likely Kyiv will secure new equipment or funding requests from Seoul in the near term.

What happens next

South Korea's presidential office says it is "reviewing additional measures" if Ukraine does not offer a satisfactory explanation, though officials have not specified what those measures might involve. Seoul's Foreign Ministry has so far avoided directly confirming or denying Zelensky's account in public, saying only that it continues to consult with Kyiv on handling the case "in a manner that respects the soldiers' free will" and in line with international humanitarian law. The unresolved question of how the two soldiers are ultimately classified and resettled — as defectors, prisoners of war, or something in between — remains open. Neither government has indicated the row will affect a July pledge to resolve the soldiers' status under international law, but both sides face pressure to show the disagreement will not derail broader cooperation as the Russia-Ukraine war grinds toward its fifth year.