South Korea considers sending weapons and intelligence officers to Ukraine in response to North Korean troops supporting Russia

¿South Korea breaking with its traditional pacifist policy of not supplying lethal weapons to a country that is at war with another, will finally end up sending weapons to Ukraine as evidence mounts that North Korean soldiers are preparing to help Russia in your war?

This is the question that is running through Seoul these days after the South Korean spy agency assured that the neighbor North Korea had sent 1,500 members of its special forces to Russia to receive training for a possible entry into combat alongside Russian troops in Ukraine.

It was last June when the South Korean government of the conservative Yoon Suk Yeol seriously warned for the first time that it was considering sending weapons to Ukraine in response to the mutual defense pact reached between Moscow and Pyongyang during the Russian president’s visit Vladimir Putin to the capital of North Korea.

“Any cooperation that helps increase the military power of North Korea is a violation of the UN Security Council and a threat to the security of our country. Therefore, we will reconsider the issue of supplying weapons to Ukraine,” they stated from the Yoon Government.

The South Korean media that monitors every activity of neighboring North Korea, fed by reports from intelligence sources, were the first to warn at the beginning of the month that the regime of Kim Jong-un was sending troops to Russia to fight Putin’s war.

The Yonhap news agency, after sharing a photograph from a pro-Russian Telegram account where a photo of the Russian and North Korean flags, side by side, on a battlefield in Ukraine, had been published, assured that Seoul every became more convinced of supplying weapons to kyiv. In addition to this, he would also be seriously considering sending military personnel to “monitor the North Korean troops that are deployed.”

“The team will likely be made up of military personnel from intelligence divisions to analyze North Korea’s battlefield strategies and participate in the interrogation of captured prisoners of war,” Yonhap said, citing an unnamed senior official as a source.

“We would consider supplying weapons for defensive purposes as part of the step-by-step scenarios, and if they seem to go too far, we could also consider offensive use,” another official said on Tuesday after the National Security Council South Korea will hold an emergency meeting to explore its responses to growing military ties between Pyomgyang and Moscow.

“North Korea is a criminal group that forces its young people to serve as Russian mercenaries in an unjustifiable war,” said a statement from the presidential office, adding that its government will take “gradual countermeasures” that will be linked to the progress of military cooperation. between Russia and North Korea. That is, if it is definitively confirmed that there are North Korean soldiers fighting with Russian troops, Seoul will respond by sending weapons to kyiv.

South Korea, which is the ninth largest arms exporter in the world – it has some of the largest arsenals of artillery projectiles in the world – has supported Ukraine from the beginning by sending humanitarian aid and has joined the sanctions of West against Moscow. But until now he had avoided a serious debate about the real possibility of breaking with his traditional pacifist policy. The government feared that, if it did so, Putin would respond by providing military support to Pyongyangwith advanced weapons and technology that the Kim regime demands for its ballistic missile program.

After South Korean intelligence officials warned that North Korea had already sent 1,500 soldiers to Russia – and was preparing to deploy a total of 12,000 troops from its elite units – NATO asked Seoul on Monday for more information about these reports. A request made personally to President Yoon by the Secretary General of the Alliance, Mark Rutte.

Neither NATO nor the United States have officially confirmed South Korean reports about the deployment of North Korean troops to the Ukraine war. The Ukrainian president himself, Volodímir Zelenskialso noted a few days ago that kyiv had information that more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers were being prepared to join the invading Russian forces.

This week, one of Pyongyang’s representatives at the UN denied these claims. “Regarding the so-called military cooperation with Russia, my delegation does not feel any need to comment on these stereotypical and unfounded rumors,” he said. But from the West, after demonstrating how the Kim regime has supplied ammunition and missiles to Moscow, despite the fact that Pyongyang has denied it on several occasions, they trust more in the reports of South Korean intelligence.

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