Seoul recalls its ambassador to Ukraine over the North Korean prisoner disclosure

South Korea's foreign ministry said on Thursday that it has decided to recall ambassador Park Ki-chang from Kyiv. The recall is the sharpest step Seoul has taken in a row over two North Korean soldiers who were captured while fighting for Russia and later sent to the South.

The two men were taken prisoner in January 2025 in the Kursk region, Yonhap reported, and arrived in South Korea in mid-September 2026. President Volodymyr Zelensky disclosed the transfer in an address to the UN General Assembly in New York last month. Seoul says there was an agreement, requested first by the Ukrainian side, to keep the move quiet in order to protect the soldiers and their families, who remain in North Korea. Zelensky's office has said no such agreement existed.

What Cho Hyun said was not enough

Foreign minister Cho Hyun said on Tuesday that he had received a message from his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Sybiha, that included an apology, and that the message fell short of what Seoul wanted. Cho said the government intended to take firm measures. The ministry's statement on Thursday was short. It said the ambassador would return to Seoul, that Seoul hoped the issues would be resolved smoothly, and that consultations would continue.

Last week the ministry called in Andrii Vieshkin, Ukraine's acting ambassador in Seoul, to record a formal concern over Kyiv's denial of the confidentiality arrangement and to ask for an official clarification and apology. BBC reporting identified the same sequence, and quoted Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi as saying on Thursday that diplomacy should prevail over emotions. Tykhyi said Ukraine remained open to restoring a constructive dialogue, even if that took time.

The soldiers had earlier told local media they wanted to be sent to South Korea, the BBC reported. They were among thousands of North Korean troops sent to support Russia. A file photograph released in late October 2025 by a Seoul-based group of North Korean defectors showed two prisoners meeting a South Korean producer at a camp in Ukraine. That image is not the transfer itself. The transfer, on the account given by officials in Seoul, happened in mid-September this year.

Why a disclosure became a recall

A recall of an ambassador is not a break in relations. The embassy stays open, and the ministry said consultations would go on. It is a public signal that the capital, not the mission, will now handle the argument. For Seoul the stake is the families still inside North Korea, and the precedent of a partner announcing a sensitive transfer from a UN podium after asking, on Cho's account, that it stay quiet.

For Kyiv the stake is different. Zelensky used the UN speech to show that North Korean troops had been on the battlefield and that some of them had chosen the South. Denying an agreement, if that is the Ukrainian position, turns the row into a question of who asked for silence and who broke it. Neither side has published a text of any arrangement. What is on the record is Cho's statement that an agreement existed from the outset, the presidential office's denial, Sybiha's message, and Thursday's recall of Park Ki-chang.

Vice foreign minister Park Yoon-joo had already lodged a complaint in September, the BBC reported. The recall is the next step after that complaint and after Cho judged the apology insufficient. The two soldiers are in the South. The argument over how their arrival was announced is now being run from Seoul rather than from the embassy in Kyiv.