The South Korean president does not rule out delivering weapons directly to Ukraine to help it in its war against Russian forces soon to be joined by North Korean soldiers according to Kyiv and Washington, which would constitute a development of Seoul’s line on this matter.
• Also read: Russia: upper house votes to ratify treaty with North Korea
• Also read: 8,000 North Korean troops ready to fight Ukrainian forces “in the coming days”
• Also read: Threat of North Korean reinforcements: Kyiv mobilizes 160,000 additional soldiers
At a news conference in Seoul on Thursday, President Yoon Suk Yeol also reported that he had raised the North Korean issue with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and planned to meet with him in the “near future.”
The government of South Korea, a major arms exporter, had already said it was studying the possibility of sending weapons directly to Kyiv. It has opposed it until now because of a long-standing national policy that prevents it from arming countries engaged in active conflicts.
“Now, depending on the level of North Korean involvement, we will gradually adjust our support strategy in several stages,” Yoon said.
“This means that we do not exclude the possibility of providing weapons,” he added, specifying, without saying more, that “if we engage in support in terms of armaments, we consider as a priority weapons defensive.
Seoul has been accusing North Korean power for several months of delivering artillery shells and missiles to Moscow intended for use in Ukraine, where Russia has been waging an offensive since February 2022.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, some 11,000 North Korean soldiers have also been deployed in the Russian region of Kursk, bordering Ukraine, to support the Kremlin forces there where, since a surprise Ukrainian offensive in August , kyiv’s forces occupy a few hundred square kilometers.
Russia and North Korea have grown significantly closer since the invasion of Ukraine began.
Meeting with Trump
On Wednesday, the upper house of the Russian Parliament ratified a mutual defense treaty with North Korea, concluded during a rare visit by Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang in June, which notably provides for “immediate military aid” reciprocal in the event of attack against one of the two countries.
A participation of North Korean soldiers in the fighting in Ukraine, which Westerners believe is imminent, would be a new blow for the Kyiv troops, lacking men and weapons, who are retreating in several places on the forehead.
Kim Jong-Un plans to meet Donald Trump “during this year”.
The two men discussed several topics related to North Korea, such as “the sending of more than 7,000 garbage balloons” by Pyongyang to South Korea, its disruption of the GPS system and its repeated missile launches, noted M . Yoon Thursday.
Departing from his pacifist predecessor Moon Jae-in, Mr. Yoon has taken a hard line on nuclear-armed North Korea and sought to strengthen ties with Washington, a nuclear-armed ally. security.
During his term, Mr. Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times, beginning with a historic summit in Singapore in June 2018, to address the issue of denuclearization in North Korea.
But since the failure of a summit in Hanoi in 2019, Pyongyang has abandoned diplomacy, redoubling its efforts in developing its military arsenal while rejecting offers for dialogue from Washington.
“I think he misses me,” Donald Trump said in July, during the election campaign, about the North Korean leader, promising that if he were to return to the White House, North Korea would stop launching missiles.
If Donald Trump “shows considerable flexibility, a dramatic agreement on nuclear talks could be within reach,” predicts Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification.
The analyst anticipates that Pyongyang could choose to refrain from openly criticizing Washington or engaging in “provocations” ahead of the inauguration of the president-elect, which is due to take place next January.
