South Korea has called for an official apology from Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed what Seoul described as a secret transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war. The South Korean government reported on Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, that it had summoned Ukraine’s ambassador to protest the disclosure, which it claimed violated a nondisclosure agreement. Ukraine has denied that such an agreement existed.
The tension follows Zelenskyy’s address to the U.N. General Assembly last week, during which he stated that Ukraine had sent two captured North Korean soldiers to South Korea. The men were taken prisoner on a Ukraine-Russia battlefield in early 2025. While South Korea has a policy of accepting North Korean defectors, the administration of President Lee Jae Myung sought to keep this specific transfer confidential to protect the safety of the soldiers' relatives and avoid diplomatic friction with North Korea.
Seong Ghi-hong, a senior presidential adviser for public relations, expressed "strong regret" on Sunday, Sept. 27, and stated that Ukraine’s denial of the agreement undermined trust between the two nations. According to Seong, Ukraine entered the agreement to avoid domestic criticism for not using the North Koreans in a prisoner exchange for Ukrainian soldiers held by Russia. The South Korean Foreign Ministry confirmed it met with Ambassador Andrii Vieshkin on Monday to deliver the protest.
This diplomatic dispute affects North Korean soldiers currently involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and their families in North Korea. According to South Korean intelligence estimates from last year, North Korea has sent approximately 15,000 troops to support Russia, with roughly 2,000 reported killed. The disclosure of defecting soldiers is rare; while over 34,000 North Koreans have fled to the South since 1953, most are civilians. For the individual soldiers, public identification increases the risk of retaliation against their families by the North Korean government, while for the South Korean government, it complicates efforts to resume diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington.
For the South Korean public, this event highlights the legal and financial commitment the state makes to North Korean defectors, who are legally regarded as citizens under South Korean law and receive government resettlement support. The scale of the military involvement mentioned involves thousands of North Korean troops and transfers of artillery and missiles to Russia. A person in South Korea would notice this as a potential shift in regional security, as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un leverages this cooperation to accelerate his nuclear weapons program despite international sanctions. The incident sets a precedent for how future North Korean prisoners of war captured in Ukraine will be handled and whether they will be resettled.
What happens next depends on the official response from Kyiv. Ambassador Vieshkin stated on Monday, Sept. 28, that he would convey Seoul’s demand for an apology to his government. No specific deadline for a response was reported. The outcome may influence whether South Korea maintains its policy of providing only humanitarian aid to Ukraine or yields to pressure to provide direct military support, a step it has so far avoided to remain in compliance with policies against supplying weapons to active conflict zones.