Why South Korea Is Still Afraid To Provide Weapons To Ukraine

After the deployment of North Korean troops in the war on the side of Russia, South Korean officials signaled that they might reconsider their policy of providing lethal weapons to Ukraine.

Ukraine's Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, heading a special delegation from Ukraine, visited Seoul last week to hold talks with President Yun Seok Yeol, National Security Advisor Shin Won-sik and Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun.

It would seem that the threatening military rapprochement between Moscow and Pyongyang should have pushed the South Korean government to support Ukraine more decisively. Following the meetings, the parties emphasized that they would continue to exchange information on Russian-North Korean cooperation and strengthen security relations. However, it seems that the ROK is still hesitant to provide Ukraine with weapons. And there are reasons for this.

 

Deterrent factors

Domestically, Yun Seok Yeol is facing serious opposition from South Korean society and the opposition, who fear being drawn into a proxy war with the DPRK on the territory of Ukraine and deteriorating relations with Moscow, which could lead to an escalation of the situation on the Korean Peninsula. Moreover, recently, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko once again threatened to sever relations and said there would be “consequences” for the security of the Republic of Korea if “South Korean weapons are used to kill Russian citizens.”

Currently, President Yun is forced to take into account a number of factors that seriously deter the South Korean government from supplying military aid to Ukraine.

Firstly, it is the desire of president-elect Donald Trump to end the Russian-Ukrainian war, as well as his earlier statements about stopping military aid to Ukraine. This calls into question the appropriateness of providing lethal weapons to Kyiv and creating risks for itself in relations with Russia if the country's leading security ally pursues a different policy. The Republic of Korea also pays attention to the situation with the possible reduction of assistance to Ukraine in European countries.

Secondly, the prevailing opinion in South Korean political and expert circles is that direct supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine instead of through third countries, particularly through the United States, will push Moscow to provide critical nuclear and missile technologies to the DPRK in return.

Thirdly, the main opposition democratic party, Toburo, which has a majority in parliament, opposes the provision of lethal weapons to Ukraine and threatens to impeach the president if such a decision is made bypassing it. In addition, as a result of the political confrontation between the opposition and the government, the opposition forces fundamentally oppose all foreign and domestic policy initiatives of the president.

Fourthly, it’s public sentiment. According to a public opinion poll conducted in late October 2024 by Gallup Korea on request of JoongAng Ilbo, 64% of respondents oppose the supply of weapons to Ukraine, while 28% are in favor, and 8% are undecided or refused to answer. The survey was conducted after the country's president said that South Korea might reconsider its position on providing lethal aid.

According to the survey, security is not a priority among citizens' requests for the president's activities in the second half of his term. The issues of greatest concern to respondents are as follows: economic recovery — 21%, improving the welfare of citizens and stabilizing inflation — 16%, strengthening national defense and security — 5% and resolving issues surrounding the first lady — 5%. As we can see, national security is on par with the scandals surrounding the president's wife (she is accused of manipulating stock prices, receiving a luxury handbag as a gift from a Korean-American pastor and influencing appointments to high positions. The Toburo Democratic Party initiated the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate these facts, but the president vetoed the opposition bill).

In view of these factors, the South Korean authorities continue to maintain a cautious position and promised to determine the level of support for Ukraine, including the supply of lethal weapons, depending on the “scale of military cooperation between Russia and North Korea.” This definition lacks specifics and therefore opens up room for maneuvering.

Meanwhile, an analysis of statements by representatives of the South Korean government suggests that the ROK continues to focus on the previously drawn “red lines”: Moscow's transfer of advanced military nuclear and missile technologies to North Korea, including re-entry technologies, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) technologies, reconnaissance satellites and nuclear submarines.

 

Opposition resistance

After the information about the deployment of North Korean troops at the front was made public, the South Korean authorities announced their intention to send a monitoring group to Ukraine to analyze North Korea's military activities on the battlefield, consult with the Ukrainian side and participate in the interrogation of captured North Korean military personnel. However, even the dispatch of a monitoring group with the participation of military and intelligence officers has faced serious resistance from the opposition Toburo Democratic Party, which is threatening to pass a motion of no confidence in the Defense Minister.

Officially, the opposition refers to Article 60 of the Constitution, according to which the National Assembly has the right to give consent to the deployment of armed forces to foreign countries. However, according to the Minister of Defense, in accordance with the current directives of the Ministry on the deployment of the armed forces abroad, he has the right to send a small group of uniformed personnel for a short stay to gather and obtain information.

The deployment of such a group would be based on Seoul's need to obtain information related to the country's security, not on requests from the UN or Kyiv. At the same time, the minister ruled out the possibility of sending military units of the ROK army to Ukraine.

The opposition is trying to limit the government's actions in two ways: it is preparing a petition to the Constitutional Court to cancel the Defense Ministry's directives to prevent the monitoring team from being sent and is seeking to amend three laws to close loopholes in the legislation that allow the executive branch to make military supplies abroad without parliamentary approval, fearing that the president will use them to provide weapons to Ukraine.

The Foreign Trade Act, which serves as the official justification for denying Ukraine lethal weapons, states that the export of certain types of strategic goods requires ministerial approval if they could affect international peace and security. However, the flexibility of the interpretation of “peaceful purposes” gives the president broad powers in their interpretation, including in making decisions on the provision of lethal weapons to Ukraine. For example, the provision of defensive weapons can serve peaceful purposes.

The Act on the Management of Military Supplies allows the Minister of Defense to transfer supplies to foreign governments for free or for profit without parliamentary approval, provided that the export does not harm the ROK's own military needs. Similarly, the Defense Acquisition Program Act does not contain any restrictions on sending defense exports to conflict zones. However, the opposition party insists that lethal aid to Ukraine contradicts “peaceful purposes” and poses a risk to the ROK's national security, and that sending military supplies through third countries is contrary to its own military needs, given the technical state of the war with the DPRK.

Therefore, despite the fact that there are windows in the legislation of the Republic of Korea to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons, under pressure from geopolitical, security and domestic circumstances, the president of the country has rejected Ukraine's request for military support, which it has repeatedly made since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

 

How could South Korea help Ukraine?

Following the deployment of North Korean troops, Ukraine has again asked the South Korean government for arms support, sending an official letter to the Ministry of Defense and requesting it at a recent meeting at NATO headquarters. In an interview with the South Korean newspaper The Dong-A Ilbo, Ukraine's Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, Dmytro Ponomarenko, said that the Ukrainian side had submitted its priority weapons needs to the Korean government. First of all, we are talking about defense systems, such as air defense, radars, electronic warfare and drone defense.

Ukraine has also provided a list of urgent needs for the defense of its territory, including 155-mm shells, MRLS systems, artillery systems, armored vehicles, and tanks. Given its internal reservations, the Ukrainian government is proposing that Seoul consider the transfer of defense equipment on a humanitarian level, emphasizing that sending defense munitions is not an aid to wage a war, but an action aimed at achieving peace.

The defense industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan produces almost the entire range of weapons and military equipment using the latest Western technologies, which makes it compatible with NATO weapons. Recently, obsolete foreign weapons and outdated licensed weapons and military equipment have started to be actively replaced by new models of domestic making. Therefore, the Republic of Korea could provide Ukraine with a number of necessary weapons, including 105-mm shells, which are stocked at three to four million pieces; Hawk, Mistral and Igla air defense missiles, which have been replaced by domestic models; Soviet equipment — T80U tanks, BMP-3, BTR-80, Igla-1 MANPADS, Metis MANPADS, received from the Russian Federation as part of the repayment of the debt inherited from the USSR; American weapons provided to the ROK under military cooperation programs — air defense systems, air defense missiles, American armored vehicles, M113, 155-mm and 105-mm self-propelled artillery, tanks, etc.

The Korean defense industry has succeeded thanks to active arms exports, flexible terms and co-production, and consistent government support. The President of the Republic of Korea has an ambitious plan to make the country the fourth largest arms exporter in the world by 2027. However, it should be noted that the increase in arms exports by more than 70% from 2018 to 2022 was thanks to contracts with European countries, including Poland ($22 billion) and Romania ($920 million), which filled their military warehouses with new South Korean models after the transfer of their weapons to Ukraine. Military support to Kyiv would not only provide Seoul with economic benefits, but would also help it test the potential of its own weapons, considering that Pyongyang is practicing and improving its weapons in war conditions.

Under pressure from the United States and other Western countries, South Korea has been supplying Ukraine with weapons indirectly through third countries, including the United States. For example, it transferred 550,000 155-mm shells to the United States to replace the ammunition it had sent to Ukraine. Thanks to this scheme, the ROK's indirect contribution to the supply of artillery ammunition has become greater than that of all European countries combined. In addition, South Korea allowed the export of its weapons components to Ukraine, which were part of the Polish Krab howitzers. Thus, ways were found to avoid negative consequences for both South Korea and President Yun Seok Yeol personally. However, Ukraine's attempts to obtain other types of South Korean weapons through contracts and transfers via third countries were immediately known to Russia and stopped under its pressure.

Such a cautious approach has significantly limited South Korea's military support for Ukraine and enabled Putin, on the one hand, to skillfully exert pressure on the weaknesses of the South Korean government and, on the other hand, to gradually change the status quo on the Korean Peninsula by drawing Pyongyang into his military adventure.

The ROK authorities are trying to engage the international community in jointly countering Russian-North Korean security cooperation, but the strategy chosen by the West and South Korea separately to avoid escalation in response to Russian aggression against Ukraine has only stimulated the dynamics of deepening relations between Russia and the DPRK. Thus, repeated threats to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, which were never realized, only further convinced Putin and Kim Jong Un that their actions would go unpunished. Without a common strategy of aggressive deterrence that envisages enough weapons for Ukraine and permission to hit military targets with long-range weapons, North Korea's involvement in the war will only grow.

Nevertheless, Ukraine should continue to engage in an active dialogue with South Korea to encourage the country's authorities to support Kyiv more. Even if the South Korean government is not ready to take decisive steps at the moment, the general global upheaval and the risk of rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in the Asian region as a whole open an unprecedented window of opportunity for deepening cooperation between Kyiv and Seoul. A window that Ukraine must use.

 

Read this article by Yuliya Samayeva in russian and Ukrainian.