South Korea “won’t sit idle” over the North’s deployment of thousands of troops to help Russia fight Ukraine, President Yoon Suk Yeol said Thursday, slamming it as a “provocation”.
Seoul’s spy agency has said that around 3,000 North Korean soldiers are currently in Russia training, likely to deploy to the frontlines against Ukraine soon, with thousands more troops to be sent by December.
NATO and Washington have confirmed that Pyongyang’s soldiers are now training in Russia, warning that if they were to join the fight against Kyiv, it could mark a dangerous escalation of the grinding war.
“South Korea won’t sit idle over this,” Yoon said after talks with visiting Polish President Andrzej Duda, adding that the two countries agreed North Korea’s deployment was “a provocation that threatens global security beyond the Korean Peninsula and Europe”.
Poland’s Duda spoke to Yoon on Thursday, after which the two leaders “strongly condemned North Korea’s nuclear and missile development and provocations, as well as its illegal military cooperation with Russia”.
Russian lawmakers voted unanimously on Thursday to ratify a defence treaty with North Korea that provides for “mutual assistance” if either party faces aggression.
South Korea, one of the world’s top 10 weapons exporters, has long resisted calls from its allies including Washington to supply Kyiv with weapons, pointing to long-standing domestic policy which bars Seoul from selling weapons to actors engaged in active conflicts.
It has recently hinted that it could look at reviewing this policy in light of North Korea’s actions, and Yoon said Thursday that Seoul would “take necessary actions in cooperation with the international community” to respond.
Seoul has also sold billions of dollars of tanks, howitzers, attack aircraft and rocket launchers to Poland, Kyiv’s key ally.
In June, South Korea agreed to transfer the knowledge needed to build K2 tanks to Poland, which experts have said could be a key step towards production inside the territory of Ukraine.
The two countries said they would “actively support the successful progress of the Korea-Poland defence cooperation,” Yoon said.
This will include signing a deal on a second contract for South Korean K2 tanks by the end of the year, he added.
