The alleged deployment of North Korean soldiers to aid Russia’s war effort in Ukraine has prompted South Korea to warn that it could send military monitors as well as weapons to Kyiv.
South Korean foreign minister Cho Tae-yul said earlier this week that all options were on the table, but experts noted that Seoul was more likely to send a variety of military support short of soldiers.
The alleged presence of around 12,000 North Korean troops in Russia, reportedly under a defence treaty that Russian president Vladimir Putin signed with Korean leader Kim Jong-un earlier this year, has set off alarm bells on the Korean peninsula.
South Korea is concerned about thousands of North Korean troops gaining fighting experience in a war theatre, and returning to potentially menace it.
Kyiv has said that its forces have already clashed with the North Koreans in Kursk, a border region where the Russians have been fighting off a Ukrainian incursion since August.
North Korea’s presence in Europe, if confirmed, would mark the isolated nation’s first participation in a major conflict since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.
In response, South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol said on Thursday that Seoul would not rule out sending weapons to Ukraine.
Seoul could also provide intelligence, military training and weapons, Kateryna Stepanenko, the deputy team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, told The Independent.
“Military support from South Korea could range from logistics support such as communications gear, aviation parts, tents, food, trucks, anything mechanical to lethal forms ranging from small arms, anti-tank weapons, all the way to long-range missiles,” said Seth Krummrich, a retired US army colonel and vice president of client risk management at Global Guardian.
If Seoul elected to give military support to Ukraine at this stage, it would likely be proportional to Pyongyang’s involvement, the analyst told The Independent.
He noted that while South Korea’s involvement would anger Mr Putin, it would not escalate the war since nothing would change tactically.
South Korea cannot send advanced modern weapons to Ukraine, but it can provide decommissioned surface-to-air missile MIM23, 105mm howitzers and artillery ammunition along with machine and assault guns, Pavlo Narozhnyi, a military expert and founder of Ukrainian charity organisation Reactive Post, said. It could also send non-military equipment like trucks.
Another way that one of the world’s largest economies could help is by financing weapons production in Ukraine, following in the footsteps of Denmark which paid for the production of the Bohdana howitzers, Mr Narozhnyi said.
This was unlikely to trigger Putin’s red lines as the South Korean involvement would be similar to Ukraine receiving aid from other countries, Mr Krummrich said.
