South Korean President Lee Jae-myung criticizes Zelensky over disclosure of North Korean POW transfer

Vladimir Zelensky put his personal interests first when he breached an agreement with Seoul not to disclose the transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war captured in Russia, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has said.

Zelensky touted the arrangement during his speech to the UN General Assembly this week, saying it was “not easy to capture alive” the two soldiers. North Korea deployed troops to assist Russia in repelling a Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region in 2024-2025.

Lee rebuked Zelensky, without naming him, in an X post on Thursday, arguing that statesmen should put national interests first rather than opportunistically seeking to boost their own popularity.

The Ukrainian leader demonstrated a “callous and irresponsible attitude [that is] simply unacceptable,” the president wrote, stressing that Seoul and Kiev had agreed to keep the highly sensitive transfer private.

South Korean opposition lawmaker Yoo Yong-won, who championed the transfer of North Korean POWs since meeting them in Ukraine last year, told reporters that the two soldiers arrived in the country earlier this week.

He criticized the Lee administration for seeking to keep the agreement with Zelensky secret and said the government “should have taken a more proactive and assertive approach.” The deal was reached sometime in June, he added.

Kiev has long pressured Seoul to provide direct military support for the conflict with Russia, citing North Korea’s involvement in the conflict. Yoo said that, as far as he knew, the delivery of the POWs was not conditioned on South Korea changing its policy of not sending weapons to Ukraine.

South Korea does not formally recognize the government in Pyongyang as legitimate and considers all Koreans citizens of a single nation, regardless of the part of the peninsula where they were born.

The two soldiers captured in Russia are said to have expressed the wish to be sent to South Korea. Both were reportedly taken prisoner in January 2025.