Can South Korea and Ukraine resolve their diplomatic spat?

South Korea‘s ambassador to Kyiv returned to Seoul on Saturday, his recall the latest in a series of tit-for-tat actions which have severely strained bilateral ties.

The sudden deterioration in their relationship might be traced again to September 23, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instructed the United Nations General Assembly in New York that Ukraine had transferred two captured North Korean troopers to South Korea.

The troopers had been captured by Ukrainian forces within the Russian Kursk area in January 2025 as they fought alongside Russian troops.

The South Korean authorities instantly expressed its anger at Zelenskyy’s revelation, insisting that the 2 governments had reached an settlement to maintain the switch of the 2 males in mid-September a secret.

Kyiv hit again, by saying that no confidentiality settlement had been in place, to which South Korea accused Ukraine of successfully mendacity and demanded an official explanation and an apology.

Ukraine has tried to clean over what it has known as a “diplomatic understanding,” however stopped in need of the general public apology that was anticipated in Seoul.

Then, experiences emerged final week {that a} shut adviser to Zelenskyy had stated that greater than 176,000 tons of diesel and different power merchandise had been shipped to Russia from South Korean ports in July and August of this 12 months, which might be a breach of transnational sanctions.

The workplace of president Lee Jae Myung in Seoul denied the accusation, and two days later recalled its ambassador to Kyiv.

What is behind Seoul’s want for secrecy?

There are a number of the explanation why South Korea needed to maintain the POW switch secret, Erwin Tan, a professor of transnational politics at Hankuk University, instructed DW.

“The first was that revealing that the POWs had been repatriated to South Korea would end in Pyongyang retaliating towards the households of the boys for surrendering,” Tan stated.

“Seoul additionally needed to keep up a channel for communication with Pyongyang,” Tan stated. “This is a serious consideration for the left-leaning wing of Korean politics, which incorporates President Lee and has traditionally favored seeking rapprochement with the North.”

Kim Sang-woo, a former politician with the left-leaning South Korean Congress for New Politics and now a member of the board of the Kim Dae-jung Peace Foundation, agrees that the South Korean authorities needed to keep away from “friction” with the North.

But Kim identified that it was at all times very probably that each Moscow and Pyongyang would discover out in regards to the switch in the end and that Lee was being criticized in some quarters at residence for showing weak.

“There is criticism that Lee’s administration is successfully appeasing the North, that it has change into too tender, and that could be a very worrisome state of affairs,” Kim stated. Yet he admits to being shocked at how rapidly the difficulty escalated.

“I feel Lee was very indignant that he was publicly being accused of mendacity in regards to the settlement and it quickly grew into a really messy confrontation,” he stated.

Has Zelenskyy’s method backfired?

While it’s unclear why Zelenskyy used his high-profile UN speech to announce the repatriation of the 2 POWs, Kim believes it could have been a calculated transfer to win extra assist from Seoul.

Kyiv might have carried out a prisoner swap with the Russians and gained the liberty of a few of its personal males in return.

But, Kim identified, Ukraine as a substitute selected to accede to Seoul’s request within the hope that South Korea would reply with further monetary and presumably even army assist. That transfer seems to have backfired.

Professor Tan anticipates that the 2 governments will proceed to “vent steam” over the difficulty.

“Given the excessive profile nature of the mutual accusations, either side will most likely interact in a mutual blame sport for the quick future, however I doubt that it’s going to flip right into a long-term case of mutual acrimony,” he stated.

“I anticipate that after the furor has died down and the press is in search of the following new story, either side will quietly resume contact on the idea of mutual pragmatism.”

Edited by: Karl Sexton