Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Earlier, South Korea’s president criticized Zelensky’s statement.
The Presidential Office called reports of an agreement between Ukraine and South Korea to keep secret the transfer of two North Korean military prisoners untrue. Dmitry Lytvyn, the president’s communications advisor, wrote this on Facebook while commenting on a post by Oksana Torop, media adviser to Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom Valeriy Zaluzhnyi.
She noted that Zelensky announced to the whole world in New York the transfer of prisoners to South Korea, but “there is a nuance — an understanding between the countries and a non-disclosure agreement.”
“And we know. A show, hype, and a striking effect for a striking image,” Oksana Torop added.
Commenting on her post, Dmitry Lytvyn wrote that no such agreement “existed.” He added that “it would be wrong to hide where certain prisoners end up.”
She replied that, according to her information, the agreement did exist, and that “the prisoner negotiations were only part of a much larger negotiation process about cooperation with South Korea during the war.” At the same time, Lytvyn stated that “there was no agreement to stay silent.”
Zelensky announced the transfer of the prisoners during his speech at the UN General Assembly. After that, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol reproached Zelensky for the statement. He called it a violation of a non-disclosure agreement. The two North Koreans, the 21-year-old Pak and the 26-year-old Ri, were captured by Special Operations Forces and paratroopers in the Kursk region in January of 2025.
On why the prisoner issue became one of the few points in the dialogue between Kyiv and Seoul, ZN.UA published an article titled “Seoul Between Moscow and Kyiv: Why an Alliance with Ukraine Never Materialized” by East Asia expert, Master of Foreign Policy, and associate senior analyst at the New Europe Center Natalia Butyrska.
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