South Korea might lift ‘limitations’ on sending weapons to Ukraine
Joel Gehrke
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South Korea might ease “limitations” on sending military equipment to Ukraine despite Russia’s threat to retaliate by aiding North Korea.
“I believe there won’t be limitations to the extent of the support to defend and restore a country that’s been illegally invaded both under international and domestic law,” South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol told Reuters. “However, considering our relationship with the parties engaged in the war and developments in the battlefield, we will take the most appropriate measures.”
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That statement raises the prospect of Seoul opening its military arsenal to Ukraine just as Ukrainian forces prepare to launch a long-awaited counteroffensive. Yoon’s team hastened to maintain that “the government’s position has not changed,” as one anonymous adviser told South Korean media, but the Kremlin took the interview as a statement that South Korea is “in principle … is ready” to send weapons to Ukraine.
“I wonder what the people of that country will say when they see Russia’s latest weapons in the hands of their closest neighbors — our partners in the DPRK?” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, wrote on social media. “As they say, quid pro quo.”
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov’s team interjected with a derisive taunt about Russian losses over the last year.
“Today, trains are transporting Korean War-era T-54 tanks from Russia to Ukraine, and tomorrow they will transport T-34 tanks to Pyongyang,” Ukraine’s defense ministry jibed on Twitter.
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a similar threat last year to Yoon’s irritation, but Seoul has been perceived by some Europeans as being swayed by the specter of Moscow backing Pyongyang.
“South Korea has been cautious … thinking that Russia is somehow able to keep their adversaries under control or something,” a senior European official told the Washington Examiner. “So South Korea definitely would be eager to sell it to the West, who has given its own ammunition to Ukraine, but they are not eager to sell it directly to Ukraine.”
South Korea has emerged as a defense manufacturing heavyweight as U.S. and European defense companies have struggled to meet the demand for military hardware, making Yoon’s calculations a key factor for Western officials and Russia alike. The intensity of the conflict in Ukraine has drained Western stockpiles, which U.S. and European defense companies have been slow to replace.
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“It helps that South Korea is ramping up production and delivering also to NATO allies because then we can replenish our own stocks. And South Korea is a big producer of ammunition,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels on April 5. “And the fact that they are now delivering more and producing more to replenish the stocks on NATO allies enable us to continue to deliver to Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg refused to “go into the issue of exactly how or to whom South Korea should deliver,” but recently leaked Pentagon documents portray South Korean officials as debating the best way of “getting the ammunition to Ukraine quickly” without sending any munitions directly to Kyiv.