Lee warns Ukraine of further measures over two North Korean prisoners

President Lee Jae Myung said on Friday that South Korea will take further measures unless Ukraine acknowledges a confidentiality agreement over two captured North Korean soldiers and apologises in public. He posted the warning on X. Kyiv says no such agreement existed. The embassy in Seoul had not replied to a request for comment when Reuters moved the story.

The dispute opened when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the UN General Assembly last month that Ukraine had transferred two North Korean prisoners of war, captured while fighting for Russia, to South Korea. Seoul then said the transfer was supposed to stay confidential, to protect the soldiers. Ukrainian officials denied any agreement. On 25 September, Dmytro Lytvyn, communications adviser to Zelenskyy, said a claim of a confidentiality deal was not true. Lee singled out that sentence on Friday.

Lee's account, given point by point, is that Ukraine asked for confidentiality, Seoul agreed, Ukraine disclosed the transfer without consent, and Ukraine then denied the agreement. He said that denial turned the head of state of another country into a liar. He called it a matter of the dignity of the Republic of Korea and its people. He also said he felt grave regret at Ukrainian remarks about an imminent military clash between North and South Korea, which he described as encouragement of war on the peninsula.

The two men were captured on the Russian side of the war and held in Ukraine. A file photograph distributed by Gyeoreol Unification Solidarity shows North Korean soldiers eating food sent by defectors at a prisoner camp in Ukraine on 28 October 2025. Their later move to South Korea is the fact both capitals accept. What they do not accept is the rule that governed the move.

Foreign ministers of the two countries have been discussing how to close the gap. Lee did not name the measures he would take if the apology does not come. An analyst cited by Reuters said any response could fall on aid and cooperation programmes rather than on a formal break. That is inference, not a decision. The only decision on the record is the Friday post: acknowledgement and an apology, or additional measures.

The soldiers are the sensitive object. North Korea treats capture as a political crime. A public handover gives Pyongyang names, dates and a propaganda line, and it tells other North Korean troops on the Russian front what happens if they surrender. Seoul's argument for silence was protection. Kyiv's argument, as Lytvyn put it, is that the silence was never agreed. One of those accounts is incomplete. Lee has now said the incomplete account makes him a liar, which is why a prisoner transfer has become a head-of-state dispute.

South Korea has sent Ukraine non-lethal aid and has been careful about weapons. That caution is the tool in any later step, and it is also the limit. Lee cannot unwind a transfer that has already happened. He can slow programmes, recall a conversation, or leave the apology demand standing. Ukraine, short of shells and air defence, has used North Korean prisoners as proof that Pyongyang is a party to the war. The UN announcement served that proof. It also collided with a bilateral promise Seoul says was made first.

No text of an agreement has been published by either side. Until one appears, the quarrel rests on Lee's sequence and Lytvyn's denial. The next useful document is a foreign-ministry note, a signed minute, or a retraction. Friday's post sets the price of none of those appearing: measures Lee has not yet listed, attached to a dignity claim he has now made in public.