There is a small diplomatic art to answering the question nobody quite asked. Since late September, South Korea and Ukraine have been in a genuine row: Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN General Assembly on Sept. 24 that Ukraine had transferred two captured North Korean soldiers to South Korea, President Lee Jae-myung said that disclosure broke a confidentiality understanding, and Seoul has since demanded an apology. On Saturday, Zelensky finally said something about it — though not, strictly speaking, the thing Seoul wants him to say.
Meeting with local journalists on Oct. 4, Zelensky said that “South Korea asked for the North Korean soldiers to be handed over,” and added a constitutional argument: under South Korea’s constitution, North Koreans are also South Korean nationals, so Kyiv was, in effect, returning citizens to their own country. Reuters noted that Zelensky did not directly address Lee’s complaint — reported after the UN speech — that Ukraine had breached a non-disclosure agreement and owed Seoul an apology. This is the first response Zelensky has offered since that row began, and it is framed as an explanation of why the transfer happened, not of why he announced it.
Which is a choice. Seoul’s position — laid out in an escalating series of statements, including Lee’s demand that Kyiv admit the secrecy pact or face further measures, and rews’s earlier account of the disputed understanding between the two governments — is not really about the prisoners. It is about whether announcing the transfer endangered the men and their families in the North, and whether Kyiv then falsely denied a pact existed. Zelensky’s answer, in substance, is: the transfer itself was legitimate and Seoul requested it. On the question Seoul is actually asking, silence.
Anyway. The more consequential part of the briefing concerned what Russia is paying for its North Korean manpower, and the payment appears to be in technology. Asked whether Russia has transferred its newly combat-tested jet-powered drone technology to Pyongyang, Zelensky answered: “Yes, of course.” He went further: “They share every technology with North Korea.” He acknowledged he did not know exactly what had been transferred — ballistic missile technology was a possibility, he suggested — and gave his reasoning: North Korea helped Russia with missiles, so Russia helps North Korea. Barter, updated for the drone age.
He also described an observable upgrade cycle in the North Korean troops themselves. The POWs Ukraine recently captured, he said, were unlike the first North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia: “They learned a lot. They shared experiences and were trained.” Beyond drone operation, North Korean troops have learned electronic warfare defense from the Russians — real, battlefield knowledge, which Zelensky called “a very dangerous element.” Then he did the arithmetic: “If Russia trains 50,000 North Korean soldiers to be able to fight, that means knowledge is shared with hundreds of thousands of North Korean troops.” Trained soldiers go home and train others; the marginal cost of copying expertise is roughly zero.
Here is where the incentives get interesting, and slightly awkward for Seoul. Zelensky said Ukraine is sharing its intelligence on North Korean forces with Japan, praised Japan as a country with excellent technology but little modern combat experience — itself a risk, in his framing — and noted he held a summit with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on the sidelines of the recent UN General Assembly, while a Japanese parliamentary delegation visited him in Kyiv. “Cooperation is very important in this regard,” he said, adding that it serves both sides’ interests.
Notice who is not in that sentence. South Korea is currently withholding the apology Ukraine hasn’t given, while Japan is receiving the battlefield intelligence Ukraine has to sell. Unsurprisingly, observers are now asking whether Ukraine is choosing Japan, not South Korea, as its East Asian military and reconstruction partner. Ukraine’s tradable asset is hard-won knowledge about fighting Russia and its allies; Korea, for the moment, is arguing about who promised to keep a secret. Markets reward the counterparty that shows up to trade.