The sentence came in the middle of an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday. “Recently, we sent two North Korean prisoners of war to the Republic of Korea,” President Volodymyr Zelensky told the assembly, as the Associated Press reported. The men were already on South Korean soil; the announcement was the first time their transfer had been made public. Within a day, the question of who had agreed to say what, and to whom, had become a quarrel between two governments and an argument inside a third country’s politics — Zelensky’s own.
In Seoul, on the 24th, President Lee Jae-myung voiced his displeasure, as quoted by the Chosun Ilbo: “I do not know what circumstances Ukraine had that led it to make this public in breach of a private agreement, but it is deeply regrettable.” The remark presumed something — that such an agreement existed. Kyiv’s presidential office moved quickly to say it did not. Dmytro Lytvyn, Zelensky’s communications adviser, wrote on social media, according to the Ukrainian outlets Suspilne and Dylova Stolytsia as cited by the Chosun: “There was no such agreement, and that is not true,” adding that “it would be wrong to hide where specific prisoners are going.”
An argument conducted in replies
The mechanics of the denial are worth noting. Lytvyn’s words appeared as a reply to a post by Oksana Torop, press aide to Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain. Torop had herself quoted Lee’s “breach of a private agreement” remark directly and written that there was “the matter of an agreement between the two countries and a promise of secrecy.” When Lytvyn denied any such arrangement, Torop did not yield. “As far as I know, there were such negotiations,” she answered, in translation from the quoted post. “The prisoner negotiations were part of a much larger negotiation process concerning cooperation with Korea during the war, and I cannot disclose the details.” Lytvyn’s response, in full and again: “There was no agreement to keep silent.”
The opposition’s useful dispute
Zaluzhny, the former commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces and now its man in London, is widely regarded as the leading potential challenger to Zelensky at the next presidential election. Torop, his press adviser, publicly described Zelensky’s disclosure of the transfer as “a flamboyant show” and “exaggerated publicity.” Ukrainian media, the Chosun reported, are now treating the prisoner-announcement controversy as a domestic political issue as well as a diplomatic one: the anti-Zelensky camp has taken to citing the South Korean president’s criticism of Kyiv as a fresh line of attack.
Lytvyn pressed the substantive point in the presidential office’s foreign-media chatroom, answering a query from South Korea’s Yonhap news agency: “We are an open country,” he wrote. “It would have been strange to simply, secretly send somewhere the people our soldiers took prisoner.” RBC Ukraine, quoting a presidential office source, went further: “Ukraine has never promised to hide this issue, and when it comes to prisoners we never hide anything. The people of Ukraine have a right to know about matters concerning prisoners, so this is a very sensitive issue.”
RBC Ukraine’s account of the dispute’s origin is chronological: the argument between Kyiv and Seoul began, it reported, when Lee publicly criticized Ukraine for violating a secrecy agreement — a disclosure the South Korean president defined as “a cruel and irresponsible act.” The same report offered Kyiv’s perspective in a single sentence: “In Ukraine’s judgment, keeping everything completely secret could also have looked strange.”
Seoul’s presidential office, for its part, maintains that “there was an understanding to handle the matter quietly, without disclosure.” Among diplomats in Seoul, a reconciling reading has emerged: Ukraine’s denials may simply mean that no binding pact to keep quiet ever existed — that South Korea conveyed its wish for discretion, Ukraine heard the wish, and the two sides walked away with different definitions of what “quiet handling” obligated. A wish conveyed is not a treaty signed. The two prisoners, in any case, are in South Korea. That much, both capitals now say in the open.