According to the Ukrainian ambassador to South Korea, Dmytro Ponomarenko, the issue of supplying offensive weapons to Ukraine is extremely difficult for official Seoul, because there are certain legal restrictions.
Points of attention
- South Korea has restrictions on the transfer of weapons to Ukraine.
- The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is actively working on cooperation mechanisms with South Korea for the possibility of obtaining lethal weapons.
- Kyiv already has certain results on this path.
South Korea has not yet made a final decision
What is important to understand is that South Korea has a legal rule that states that the government is not allowed to provide weapons to countries that are at war.
Given this, in our work with official Seoul, we propose a step-by-step approach to this issue. For example, first concentrate on obtaining defense type and class systems: air defense equipment, radars, EW systems, etc.
Dmytro Ponomarenko
Ambassador of Ukraine to South Korea
The ambassador also drew attention to the fact that the protection of peaceful Ukrainians, who are daily victims of Russian terror, is "not about the supply of weapons as such."
According to the diplomat, in this case we are talking about fair and badly needed humanitarian aid for the sake of preserving the safe life of civilians in Ukraine.
This is to enable children to go to school without hindrance, and their parents to work; do not wake up from sirens and explosions; sleep at home, not in bomb shelters. To live and feel protected, the ambassador added.
As Dmytro Ponomarenko noted, the work carried out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to find mechanisms of cooperation acceptable to Seoul in order to unblock the supply of lethal weapons of various types has already produced certain results.
South Korea plans to respond to North Korea's entry into the war against Ukraine
As mentioned earlier, recently the official Seoul made it clear that it is already considering the possibility of increasing support for Ukraine.
It is important to understand that this happened after the statements of Ukrainian intelligence about the deployment of North Korean troops near the Russian border with Ukraine.
According to South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, his country is actively discussing "all possible scenarios", including the possibility of sending weapons to Ukraine in response to North Korea's actions in Russia.
In addition, it is emphasized that official Seoul will closely monitor the military activity of the DPRK in the Russian Federation and the benefits that Pyongyang receives from Moscow in order to determine further actions.
