South Korea is pleading with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to intensify its aid for Ukraine as North Korean troops enter the war on behalf of the Russians.
A South Korean delegation is visiting Brussels briefing NATO officers on the dangers of North Koreans now deploying to Ukraine — a level of escalation that South Korean strategists believe may justify NATO members entering the war on the ground and in the air, not just by supplying arms and ammunition.
The South Koreans, led by the South’s National Intelligence Service, may even talk about sending South Koreans to Kyiv — not quite as soldiers but as “officials” to see what the North Koreans are really up to.
To get a first-hand look, some of them would have to accompany Ukrainian forces in contact with the Russians and North Koreans, possibly in a region that Ukrainians have seized from the Russians.
“Seoul is currently considering the option to study and analyze the tactics and military doctrine of North Korean troops,” said South Korea’s Yonhap News.
The team “would likely be made up of intelligence officials and North Korea specialists from the spy agency and the military, and they could possibly participate in interrogations of captured North Koreans.”
The active participation of South Koreans in the war, under whatever cover, military or civilian, would mark a dramatic escalation of a conflict in which North and South Korean forces might eventually face each other thousands of miles from the Korean peninsula. If that were to happen, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, having already declared South Korea the “enemy” and blockaded all possible road and rail links to the South, might be tempted at last to risk taking the war to Korea.
The battlefields of Ukraine could become an ideal laboratory for both sides to test their warfighting skills and weaponry and penetrate each other’s forces mentally as well as physically. “Officials specializing in psychological warfare could also possibly join the team to assist in efforts to call on North Koreans to surrender,” said Yonhap.
Regardless of whether the war reaches that level of escalation, this week’s talks at NATO headquarters at Brussels are sure to cover the prospect of South Korea sending arms and ammunition directly to Ukraine rather than channeling them through Poland and other countries. South Korea has so far, to superficial appearances, only sent “humanitarian” aid, but the country’s arms manufacturers are salivating to open new markets in Ukraine and other east European countries looking for defense against President Putin’s expansionist ambitions.
At the same time, the South Koreans might look for a more peaceful way of diverting the North Koreans from Ukraine. Yonhap reported, “Officials specializing in psychological warfare could also possibly join the team to assist in efforts to call on North Koreans to surrender.”
The North Koreans, though, have formed such a tight bond with the Russians that any “peace plan” has virtually no chance of getting anywhere.
Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency has already denounced President Zelensky’s “peace plan” as “Fraught with Danger of Russia-NATO Military Conflict.” KCNA quoted a Russian official saying the Ukraine plan, “aiming at officially drawing NATO into the Ukrainian conflict,” was “short-sighted, rash and irrational.” It was, said KCNA, a scheme “for expanding the war in the years ahead, rather than a ‘peace plan.’”
The South Korean delegation arrived at Brussels just as NATO’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, added NATO’s confirmation to what the South Koreans and Americans have been saying, that North Korea has sent the vanguard of a force that’s set to reach between 10,000 and 12,000 troops to Ukraine.
North Korea, while castigating South Korea for sending drone flights over the North, is so far playing coy about its new game in Ukraine.
“North Korea defends right to send troops to Russia but doesn’t admit to doing so,” said NK News, a website at Seoul, reporting the North’s foreign ministry shifting “from outright denial” while Ukraine reports the North’s soldiers “could start fighting Monday” — i.e. today.
KCNA reported the North’s vice foreign minister Kim Jong-gyu as saying “the ‘rumor’ of soldiers being dispatched to Russia is a matter for Pyongyang’s defense ministry, stating that the foreign ministry ‘does not feel the need to confirm it separately.’”