South Korea weighs arming Ukraine after North Korean deployment

South Korea’s conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol is weighing directly providing arms to Ukraine, a potentially consequential shift in the conflict, in response to North Korea’s deployment of troops to the Russian front line.

Seoul has previously resisted entreaties from western allies to draw on its vast stockpiles of military armaments, preferring to contribute to Kyiv’s war effort through non-lethal aid. But North Korea’s deployment in Russia’s western Kursk region, which US officials said on Thursday could be as large as 8,000 troops, is shifting that calculation, according to analysts and diplomats.

Yoon and other senior officials in Seoul have described Pyongyang’s direct participation in the conflict as a threat to South Korea’s security, offering North Korean troops valuable battlefield experience. They also fear Moscow may share sophisticated military technologies in exchange for Pyongyang’s support.

Yoon has vowed not to “sit idle” in response to the North Korean deployment. His office confirmed this week that Seoul intended to send a delegation to Ukraine to monitor the North Korean forces, following a call on Tuesday between Yoon and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

But the prospect of directly supplying arms to Ukraine has been fiercely opposed by South Korea’s leftwing opposition, which holds a majority in parliament and blames the Yoon administration’s hardline stance towards North Korea for pushing Pyongyang into Moscow’s embrace.

“[Arming Ukraine] is an incredibly dangerous idea that treats people’s lives like pawns in a game of chess,” Park Chan-dae, floor leader of the Democratic party, told a party rally last week, arguing South Korea had no direct interest in the outcome of the war.

Yoon “shouldn’t engage South Korea in a proxy war with North Korea . . . in a faraway land”, said Park, adding that deepening Seoul’s involvement would “risk starting a military conflict on the Korean peninsula”.

“The South Korean government is caught between foreign partners asking for it to do more and an opposition demanding it does less,” said Jeongmin Kim, lead analyst at Seoul-based information service Korea Pro.

South Korea’s decades-long preparations for a possible renewal of hostilities with its northern enemy, coupled with its defence industry’s formidable manufacturing capacity, have created a large stockpile of weaponry including artillery shells, tanks, howitzers and surface-to-surface missiles.

A US ally, South Korea is a regular attendee at Nato summits and supplies several of its members. Analysts said its arms would largely be compatible with those already in operation among Ukraine’s forces.

“South Korean support for Ukraine could turn the tide on the entire conflict,” said Henry Haggard, a senior adviser at consultancy WestExec Advisors who served as minister-counsellor for political affairs at the US embassy in Seoul between 2021 and 2023.

“Korean firms not only make world-class armaments tailor-made to help Ukraine, they also have the production capacity to deliver essential weapons at a speed that could make a difference when needed most,” he added.

South Korea has provided support indirectly to Ukraine by replenishing US stocks of 155mm artillery shells delivered to Kyiv. “European governments are aware that South Korea has provided more artillery shells to Ukraine than all European countries combined, even if via third countries,” said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King’s College London.

Zelenskyy said on Thursday that he was sending a representative to Seoul to make “detailed” requests for artillery and air defence systems in light of the North Korean deployment to Russia.

But Seoul has until now declined to initiate direct lethal aid, citing the country’s Foreign Trade Act, which restricts arms exports “except for peaceful purposes”.

Pacheco Pardo said there had been “an understanding between Seoul and Moscow that South Korea wouldn’t provide direct lethal aid to Ukraine, while Russia limited its support for North Korea”.

Russia’s ambassador to Seoul declared this year that South Korea was “one of the friendliest among the unfriendly countries”.

But Pacheco Pardo said the understanding was “now over”.

“I think the Yoon government will provide lethal aid to Ukraine if it has proof that Russia has increased its support to North Korea, particularly the transfer of technologies that can help Pyongyang develop its missile, satellite, space and other high-tech programmes,” he said.

Russia declined to comment on Thursday on whether it had assisted North Korea’s missile programme, hours after Pyongyang tested its latest intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-19.

But a day earlier, during a meeting with US defence secretary Lloyd Austin in Washington, South Korea’s defence minister Kim Yong-hyun said there was a “high chance” that North Korea was seeking Russian defence technologies in exchange for its troop deployment.

A Seoul-based European diplomat said the South Korean government’s position on arms supplies “has moved” since the North Korean deployment, “but very, very cautiously”, noting that Seoul was likely to wait for the outcome of the US presidential election before deciding on its next step.

Jeongmin Kim said the Yoon administration appeared to be preparing to argue that providing lethal aid did not require parliament’s support and would not violate the Foreign Trade Act, on the grounds that arming Ukraine would contribute to international peace by helping bring the war to an end.

Such a move is likely to meet public opposition. According to a Gallup Korea poll conducted soon after the revelations of North Korean troops in Russia, only 13 per cent of South Koreans surveyed backed military support for Ukraine, while 66 per cent said support should be limited to non-military and humanitarian aid.

But Yang Uk, a defence expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, argued that direct military support would help Seoul repay its historic debt to countries that sent troops to defend South Korea during the Korean war in the 1950s.

“We had the same experience when North Korea invaded us that Ukraine is having now,” said Yang. “The world came to help us then, so now the least we can do is contribute to the global order in return.”

Additional reporting by Christopher Miller in Kyiv