‘Serious diplomatic faux pas’: Seoul demands apology from Kyiv over POW transfer disclosure

President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine. (UPI/Yonhap)

Amid an escalating diplomatic row with Kyiv, the Blue House is demanding an official apology from Ukraine after its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went public with the transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea.

The Lee administration views Kyiv’s decision to breach the confidentiality agreement over the POW handover, and then deny that it had agreed to keep the matter confidential, as warranting a stern response. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the acting ambassador from Ukraine to lodge a complaint. 

The Blue House on Monday evening issued a statement under the name of Seong Ghi-hong, the senior presidential secretary for public relations and communication, immediately after President Lee Jae Myung returned from his visits to the US and Mexico.

“We express strong regret over the Ukrainian government’s unilateral disclosure [of the prisoner transfer] in violation of our agreement and the subsequent false news release denying that any non-disclosure agreement existed. We thus demand an official explanation and apology,” the statement said.

Detailing the process of negotiating confidentiality, Seong said, “During the negotiations, [the Ukrainian government] asked that the matter be kept confidential, saying, ‘Given the sensitivity of the issue, let’s keep the handover under wraps to avoid domestic criticism over a missed opportunity to exchange the North Korean POWs for Ukrainian prisoners.’”

This statement was a rebuttal to a claim made Friday via social media by a member of the Ukrainian presidential office denying that his government agreed on non-disclosure. Zelenskyy announced the POW transfer in his keynote speech Wednesday to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, and Lee subsequently expressed regret over this breach of confidentiality.

With the issue escalating into a row over who is telling the truth, the Blue House took the unusual step of releasing the details of bilateral talks with Kyiv and conveyed its strong regret and protest.

The Blue House apparently felt the need to correct Ukraine’s claims given their domestic and international repercussions.

“Ukraine requested that the matter be kept confidential, and our position was that the POW transfer issue in principle should remain private,” a Blue House source said Monday. “But President Zelenskyy made this public without sufficient prior explanation, and an aide to the Ukrainian president committed a serious diplomatic faux pas by making our president look like a liar.”

The tough stance is seen as a response to domestic criticism by groups like the main opposition People Power Party that the secrecy surrounding the POW handover stemmed from the Lee administration’s desire to appease North Korea.

“Since misunderstanding keeps rising domestically as if political intrigue was behind the scenes, we felt the need to clarify the matter and set the record straight,” the Blue House official said. 

The ruling Democratic Party, too, continued to criticize Kyiv on Monday. 

“The Ukrainian government must officially issue an official explanation and apology,” the party’s floor spokesperson, Rep. Jeon Eun-su, said. “This is the least it can do to preserve the friendly relations between the two countries.”

Rep. Kim Byung-joo, a ranking party member of the National Assembly’s National Defense Committee, said, “All we’ve received so far in return for our humanitarian aid and US$100 million in economic assistance is a breach of a presidential agreement and the spread of false information.” He also urged the country to “immediately reconsider” support for Ukraine.

On Monday, Park Yoon-joo, the first vice minister of foreign affairs, summoned Andrii Vieshkin, the acting ambassador of Ukraine to South Korea, to the ministry’s office in Seoul on Monday to express strong regret over the affair and to call for an explanation, an apology and an assurance that there will be no incidents of this sort down the road. 

“The [Korean] government appears to have also judged that this issue could affect the future progress of inter-Korean ties,” said Lee Soo-hyung, an adviser to the Seoul-based Institute for National Security Strategy.

“Ukraine has requested support from South Korea such as missiles and military supplies, and Kyiv apparently sought to use [the POW transfer] as an opportunity to pressure South Korea,” he added. “But I consider this a strategic mistake by President Zelenskyy — this approach benefits neither South Korea nor Ukraine.”

“Since President Zelenskyy broke the terms of the agreement and disclosed [the POW transfer], he must provide an explanation,” a diplomatic source who once served as a senior diplomat said. “Since we didn’t agree to take the POWs in exchange for our support for Ukraine, we must separate the issue of aid from this matter in our response.”