South Korea's president says Ukraine breached a non-disclosure agreement by announcing North Korean POW transfer at UN

Why it matters

The row is the first public friction in the Kyiv-Seoul dialogue over North Korean POWs and raises the diplomatic cost of an otherwise positive transfer: Seoul says it had agreed to keep the move quiet, while Kyiv says no such agreement existed. Lee framed the public disclosure as reckless given risks to the POWs, their families in North Korea, diplomacy, national security and the Korean Peninsula. In South Korea, the episode has also become a domestic political problem for Lee, with the opposition accusing him of letting a foreign leader announce the transfer.

What happened

On September 23, during his address to the UN General Assembly in New York, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine had transferred two captured North Korean soldiers to South Korea. The following day, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said in a post on X that Ukraine had violated a non-disclosure agreement by going public, calling the disclosure "cruel and irresponsible" and a serious risk to the POWs, their families in North Korea, diplomacy, national security and the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Lee said he did not know the specific circumstances that led the Ukrainian side to break the agreement but expressed deep regret, and noted that even within the South Korean government there had been calls to publicize the repatriation for political reasons, but the decision had been to keep it quiet.

Ukraine's presidential office told the Yonhap news agency that no such non-disclosure agreement existed, that Kyiv disclosed only the fact of the transfer without operational details, and that it would have been "strange" to keep the entire operation secret. Zelensky's communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn repeated that denial, calling Ukraine "an open country" and saying it would be wrong to hide where POWs end up. An anonymous South Korean presidential administration official separately told Yonhap that Seoul had been warned in advance of Zelensky's intention to speak about the transfer but had not been told how it would be framed.

How Ukrainian sources describe it

Ukrainian sources lead with the Office of the President's denial that any non-disclosure agreement existed and with Dmytro Lytvyn's framing of Ukraine as "an open country" that only reported the bare fact of the transfer. Ukrainian coverage also foregrounds Zelenskyy's broader criticism of North Korea's role in the war — accusing Kim Jong Un of using his soldiers "as currency" — and emphasizes the POWs' own written wish to go to South Korea as justification for the disclosure. The transfer is presented as evidence of North Korean involvement in the war on Russia's side.

How international sources describe it

International reporting frames the story primarily as a diplomatic rift between Seoul and Kyiv and as a domestic political problem for the Lee administration. International outlets highlight Lee's "cruel and irresponsible" characterization, the opposition criticism from People Power Party's Ahn Cheol-soo, and the internal Ukrainian disagreement about whether a non-disclosure agreement existed — citing Oksana Torop's claim that one did, against Lytvyn's denial. The case is also framed as the first confirmed instance of North Korean soldiers being captured alive in the war and transferred to South Korea.

Where reporting differs

Sources disagree on whether a non-disclosure agreement between Ukraine and South Korea over the transfer existed: South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and Oksana Torop, media adviser to Ukrainian Ambassador Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, say it did, while Zelenskyy's communications adviser Dmytro Lytvyn and the Office of the President of Ukraine deny it. There is also a narrower dispute over whether Seoul was adequately warned in advance: an anonymous South Korean presidential administration official said Seoul knew of Zelensky's intention but was not told the form of disclosure, while Lee's broader position treats the public announcement as an unconsented breach of an agreement.

Background

The two North Korean soldiers — 21-year-old Pek and 26-year-old Ri — were captured by Ukrainian special operations forces and paratroopers in Russia's Kursk Oblast in January 2025, reportedly the first known case of North Korean troops being taken prisoner in the war. Both expressed in writing their wish to move to South Korea, with reports of those appeals appearing in December 2025. Under the Constitution of the Republic of Korea, North Korean residents are considered citizens of the country, obligating Seoul to accept them on its territory if they wish. In late May 2025 South Korea asked that the two not be included in "1000 for 1000" prisoner exchange lists, and in June 2026 the South Korean Foreign Ministry said it was ready to accept all North Korean soldiers captured by Ukraine if they wished and opposed their forced return to Russia or North Korea. Ukrainian and South Korean estimates place North Korean deployments supporting Russia at roughly 15,000 since 2024, concentrated in the Kursk border area; Zelenskyy said on August 8 that Russia plans to deploy 30,000–50,000 North Korean personnel, and Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence, said in late August that a new 8,500-strong contingent had been added.