Seoul recalls its ambassador to Kyiv over two captured soldiers

South Korea will recall its ambassador to Ukraine, the foreign ministry said on Thursday. The ministry said it hoped the current issues could be resolved and that talks with Kyiv would continue. It did not name a date for the envoy's return or a list of the issues. The recall is the sharpest public step so far in a row that began when Ukraine said it had sent two captured North Korean soldiers to Seoul.

President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the transfer last month, in a speech to the UN General Assembly in September. He said the two North Koreans had not been easy to capture alive. The two men were among troops Pyongyang sent to fight on Russia's side. They had told local media they wanted to go to South Korea. Seoul says the transfer was supposed to stay secret. Zelensky's office says there was no non-disclosure agreement.

The confidentiality dispute has a specific shape, on the account from Lee Jae Myung's office. The transfer was kept quiet in part to protect the soldiers' families in the North. Kyiv, on that account, also wanted it quiet, to avoid criticism that Ukraine had given up a chance to trade the two men for Ukrainian prisoners of war. Seoul says Ukraine indicated that the soldiers would be mentioned in Zelensky's address, but not that the fact of their transfer to the South would be announced. Lee called the announcement greatly disappointing and said the transfer was a highly sensitive issue for national security. The foreign ministry said the actions had seriously damaged trust.

The argument then moved to whether an apology was given. Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo lodged a formal complaint in September with his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Vieshkin. Earlier this week Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said he had received an apology from Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, and that it fell short of what Seoul expected. On Wednesday, Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Heorhii Tykhyi told reporters that Sybiha had not apologised, according to the Ukrainian site Liga. Thursday's recall sits on top of that contradiction: one capital says an apology arrived and was not enough, the other says no apology was made.

The two soldiers are the only people at the centre of the public dispute. Their names have not been released. The wider fact both sides accept is that North Korean troops have fought for Russia, in numbers described by officials and news agencies as thousands. A transfer of two wounded captives is a small movement of people inside that larger deployment. The diplomatic cost is out of proportion to the headcount because each capital is arguing about a promise, not about the war itself.

South Korea is not a weapons supplier to Ukraine in the way the United States or several European states are. In July Seoul announced a 100 million dollar assistance package. Russia's foreign ministry has said it would have no choice but to retaliate if South Korea provided arms. The recall does not cancel the July package. It does pull the ambassador, which is the usual signal that a capital wants a dispute registered at home and not left to an embassy.

Thursday's ministry statement was short on purpose. It said consultations would continue and that outstanding issues were expected to be resolved smoothly. A recall with that sentence attached is a pause, not a break in relations. Embassies can keep working under a charge d'affaires. What cannot be papered over, on the texts already issued, is the disagreement on whether a secrecy deal existed and whether Sybiha apologised.

The next dated fact that would settle either point is a document: the text Seoul says was agreed, or a record of the Cho-Sybiha exchange. Neither has been published. Until one is, the public record is the recall itself, Zelensky's September announcement, Lee's description of the transfer as a security issue, and two incompatible accounts of an apology.