President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea speaks on the phone with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine on Oct. 29, 2024. (Yonhap)
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol had a telephone conversation Tuesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where the two agreed to exchange delegations and envoys and increase their intelligence exchanges and cooperation in response to North Korean forces joining the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Attention is now focusing on whether the South Korean government’s response to the war and means of involvement will change following Yoon’s announcement that Seoul would take phased measures based on developments in the war and his agreement to strategic discussions on responding to the military cooperation between Russia and North Korea.
During the conversation Tuesday, Yoon commented on the “dangerous and unprecedented situation” of North Korea “going beyond providing military weapon assistance to Russia to deploy its special forces” to participate in the conflict.
He also suggested that South Korea and Ukraine should “communicate closely and coordinate their responses going forward as parties directly impacted by the military closeness between Russia and North Korea.”
He went on to say that Seoul would “continue observing the battlefield situation closely and adopt practical response measures on a step-by-step basis.”
“While the possibility of Russia transferring sensitive military technology to North Korea is an issue, a situation where North Korea teaches the experience gained from the war in Ukraine to a North Korean army of over 1 million would pose a grave threat to South Korea’s security,” he said.
During the conversation, Zelenskyy reportedly said that the imminent introduction of North Korean forces on the front lines in Ukraine was ushering the conflict into a “new realm that has not been experienced before.” He also announced plans to send a special envoy to South Korea in the near future to pursue strategic discussions toward a joint response.
In a message posted later on the social media site X, Zelenskyy wrote that the war “is becoming internationalized, extending beyond two countries.”
He also said he had “invited South Korea to join the G7 Vilnius Declaration on bilateral security guarantees in support of Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, observations of the activities of North Korean forces deployed in Russia are underway.
On Monday, the US Defense Department reported that around 10,000 North Korean troops had been dispatched to Russia and were expected to support Russian forces on the Ukrainian border in a matter of weeks.
In a briefing the same day, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said, “We believe that the DPRK has sent around 10,000 soldiers in total to train in eastern Russia that will probably augment Russian forces near Ukraine over the next several weeks.”
She went on to say, “[I]f we see DPRK troops moving in and towards the front lines, [. . .] they are co-belligerents in the war.”
She also replied in the negative when asked if there would be limits on what US weapons Ukraine would be able to use against North Korean soldiers.
In a meeting with reporters after a briefing on North Korean troop movements at the North Atlantic Council in Brussels the day before, Hong Jang-won, the South Korean National Intelligence Service’s first deputy director, replied in the affirmative when asked if it had been confirmed with NATO that the leader of the dispatched North Korean troops was Kim Yong-bok, the deputy chief of North Korea’s General Staff.
Hong went on to say that it had been “reported to the administration that [the first introduction of North Korean troops on the front lines] appears like to happen sometime around early December,” adding that “Russia and North Korea’s tempo appears to have sped up a bit since the information [about the troop deployments] was made public.”
By Lee Bon-young, Washington correspondent; Lee Seung-jun, staff reporter; Son Hyun-soo, staff reporter
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