COMMENTARY: Seoul ready to welcome North Korean soldiers who fought for Putin

COMMENTARY: Seoul ready to welcome North Korean soldiers who fought for Putin

Introduction: Two soldiers, a constitutional question, and a global precedent

January 2025: the capture that changed everything

On January 11, 2025, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the Security Service of Ukraine announced something unprecedented in the history of this conflict: two North Korean soldiers had been captured in Kursk Oblast, on Russian territory, where they were fighting alongside Kremlin forces. Images released by the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces showed the evacuation of a dazed man wearing Russian equipment and carrying a fake military ID card issued in the name of a resident of the Russian Republic of Tuva.

This was not an anomaly. It was the public confirmation of what South Korean and Western intelligence services had been documenting for months: North Korea had deployed between 14,000 and 15,000 soldiers to Kursk Oblast at the end of 2024. These men — trained, indoctrinated, and according to reports ordered to commit suicide rather than surrender — were fighting and dying for a war that was not theirs. South Korean intelligence estimated that around 6,000 of them had been killed or wounded by early 2026.

In December 2025, an unexpected letter

In December 2025, the two North Korean prisoners held by Ukraine did something their regime had forbidden them even to imagine: they wrote a letter expressing their wish to go to South Korea. Not to return to North Korea. Not to be handed over to Russia. To go West — toward a country they had never seen, whose language they share, and whose constitutional system theoretically recognizes them as citizens.

That letter set in motion a quiet diplomatic chain that culminated, on June 23, 2026, in a formal declaration by the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs: South Korea is prepared to welcome all North Korean prisoners of war captured in Ukraine who make that request. The declaration also specified that Seoul opposes any forced transfer of these prisoners to Russia or North Korea.

The constitutional logic and international law

All Koreans are South Korean citizens

South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jae-wong justified Seoul's position with a clear constitutional argument: the South Korean constitution defines the entire Korean peninsula as the territory of the Republic of Korea. In South Korean domestic law, all residents of the peninsula — including those living in North Korea — are recognized as South Korean citizens. This provision, which has served as the legal foundation for welcoming tens of thousands of North Korean defectors over decades, therefore fully applies to prisoners of war captured in Ukraine.

This legal framework is not new. It has been in use since 1948. What is new is its application in the context of an armed conflict where North Korean soldiers fought on the soil of a third state on behalf of an aggressor state. The situation creates a precedent with no equivalent in international law of war. These men are not classic refugees. They are captured combatants, potentially eligible for protection under the Geneva Conventions, and simultaneously recognized as citizens of a state other than the one for which they were fighting.

The UN non-refoulement principle

On May 13, 2026, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk established that the non-refoulement principle applies to North Korean prisoners held by Ukraine. This fundamental principle of international refugee law prohibits returning a person to a country where they face persecution, torture, or other serious harm to their physical integrity.

The High Commissioner did not have to look far to identify the risk. North Korea is documented by all UN reports as one of the world's most repressive regimes. Soldiers who surrender, according to reports from Daily NK, are actively presented by North Korean propaganda as cowards, in contrast with those the regime calls heroes for committing suicide rather than being captured. Returning these two men to North Korea would be sending them to certain death or detention from which no one emerges.

June 30 in Seoul: a meeting shaping the future

Two foreign ministers, one question of precedent

The foreign ministers of South Korea and Ukraine were scheduled to meet in Seoul on June 30, 2026. The agenda explicitly includes the question of North Korean prisoners. It is a diplomatic first: never before had official Ukrainian and South Korean representatives had to negotiate the fate of soldiers who had fought against Ukraine in a war ordered by Russia.

The practical stakes are numerous. How does Ukraine physically transfer these prisoners? What diplomatic guarantees can South Korea offer? How to manage the predictable reaction from Moscow and Pyongyang? And above all: does this transfer create a precedent for other North Korean soldiers who might fall into Ukrainian forces' hands in future operations?

The silence of Moscow and Pyongyang

At the time of the South Korean declaration on June 23, neither Russia nor North Korea had publicly reacted. That silence is itself diplomatic language. Moscow finds itself in an uncomfortable position: it cannot officially deny the existence of North Korean soldiers on its soil — the photographic and video evidence is too abundant — but it also cannot acknowledge that these soldiers have requested asylum in a Western country, which contradicts the narrative of an infallible Sino-Russian-Korean alliance.

For Kim Jong-un, the situation is even more delicate. These two living soldiers in Kyiv are living proof that his orders to die rather than surrender were not universally followed. Their eventual transfer to South Korea — broadcast to the world — would be a major symbolic humiliation for a regime whose survival depends on absolute obedience and on the persuasion that death is preferable to defeat.

What this reveals about the Moscow-Pyongyang alliance

An alliance of interests, not values

The deployment of North Korean soldiers in Ukraine is one of the most concrete manifestations of the contemporary axis of malign actors: Russia, North Korea, Iran, China — four authoritarian regimes whose interests converge around a single common objective, the weakening of the Western-led order. North Korea provides cannon fodder and ammunition. Russia offers in return military technology, fuel, and the international legitimacy Pyongyang desperately seeks.

But this alliance has revealing limits. Moscow had to dress its allied soldiers in Russian uniforms, give them false Russian identities, and finance their salaries. That is not the behavior of a self-assured power. It is that of a country that needs reinforcements but cannot admit it publicly. Every time a North Korean soldier is taken prisoner, the architecture of that fiction collapses a little further.

The question that most unsettles the alliance

If Ukraine begins transferring North Korean prisoners to South Korea, it breaks one of the fundamental assumptions of the deployment: that Kim Jong-un's soldiers would never face a choice between their regime and their survival. These two men who wrote a letter in December 2025 have already made that choice. And they chose to live. That is exactly what neither Moscow nor Pyongyang wanted the world to see.

For Ukraine, this file is also a prime intelligence opportunity. In-depth interrogations of North Korean soldiers have already produced information about command structures, operational capabilities, and the real conditions of Pyongyang's troop deployment in Russia — information of equal interest to South Korea and NATO intelligence services.

Ukraine between international law and strategic calculation

Honoring Geneva, even in an existential war

Ukraine finds itself in a delicate but coherent position consistent with its stated values. It captured these soldiers, interrogated them, and treated them according to Geneva Convention standards — contrary to Russia, whose detention practices toward Ukrainian prisoners have been documented as systematically criminal. By refusing to hand them over to Russia or North Korea against their will, it respects both the non-refoulement principle and the UN recommendation.

This choice is not without political risk. Moscow could interpret the transfer of these prisoners to Seoul as a provocation. But Kyiv has clearly calculated that the gain in international credibility — demonstrating that it treats its prisoners according to international law, contrary to its adversary — outweighs the diplomatic risks by far. In a war where image counts as much as territory, it is a strategically intelligent choice.

The model for future prisoners

The South Korean declaration of June 23 sets an important operational precedent for the rest of the conflict. If fighting continues in Russian territory or if Ukraine captures other North Korean soldiers in future operations, there now exists an established legal and diplomatic framework for their treatment. Seoul indicated it is prepared to welcome all North Korean prisoners who make the request — not just the two currently held.

That is a strong signal sent also to North Korean soldiers still alive in the field. Even if Pyongyang's propaganda tells them to die rather than surrender, there now exists a visible, documented, internationally recognized alternative: surrender, seek asylum, and potentially access a life in South Korea. That message, if it somehow percolated through to the North Korean battalions deployed in Russia, would have considerable psychological and strategic value.

Conclusion: A legal precedent with lasting geopolitical consequences

What the international community retains

The South Korean declaration of June 23, 2026 will remain in the annals of international law of armed conflicts. For the first time, a state has formally announced it is ready to welcome prisoners of war captured in a third-party armed conflict, on the basis of a constitutional continuity of nationality. It is a legal precedent that will need to be analyzed and integrated by international lawyers, humanitarian organizations, and governments managing populations divided by artificial political borders.

What Ukraine and South Korea are building together

The meeting of the two foreign ministers in Seoul on June 30, 2026 is not merely a discussion about two prisoners. It is the construction of a strategic partnership between two nations facing, distinctly but connectedly, the same threats: Russia for Ukraine, North Korea for South Korea. Their collaboration on this file is a message to Moscow, Pyongyang, and Beijing: democracies facing authoritarianism know how to recognize and support each other, even thousands of kilometres apart.

What the next chapter of this file could reveal

Questions awaiting answers after June 30

The Seoul meeting of June 30 will necessarily leave open questions. Does South Korea agree to take charge of transporting the prisoners from Ukraine? Under what conditions can Ukrainian military interrogations continue once the transfer is completed? What physical protection guarantee can Seoul offer against possible North Korean or Russian retaliatory action on its soil?

These logistical and security questions are real. But they are surmountable. South Korea has welcomed more than 33,000 North Korean defectors since the end of the Korean War. It has an established integration system, psychological support programs, and unique experience managing people who grew up in one of the world's most closed regimes. These two soldiers would not be the first people to transit between these two worlds.

The question of 6,000 North Korean killed or wounded

Behind the two-prisoner file looms a broader and more difficult humanitarian question. Approximately 6,000 North Korean soldiers were reportedly killed or wounded in Kursk Oblast by early 2026. Are their bodies — or what remains of them — repatriated to North Korea? Are they buried anonymously in Russia? Do the families of these men know what happened to their sons, brothers, fathers? These questions have no answers yet. And they probably never will, in a regime where the very existence of this deployment remains semi-official.

Final conclusion: Geopolitics has a human face

What two Northern soldiers change in the global equation

Geopolitical conflicts are often analyzed in terms of military divisions, formal alliances, and balances of power between major powers. The South Korean declaration of June 23, 2026 reminds us that behind state alignments are individuals whose personal choices can have considerable diplomatic consequences. Two soldiers who decided to live rather than die for a regime that commanded the opposite have set off a diplomatic chain at the international scale.

A message that goes beyond these two men

The message this declaration sends is clear: North Korean soldiers sent by Kim Jong-un to fight in service of Putin are not abandoned to their fate if given the choice. There exists a recognized exit path under international law, supported by an elected government, and consistent with the most fundamental humanitarian conventions. If these two men eventually reach Seoul, they will be the first North Korean soldiers to describe from the inside what it means to be sent to fight for Russia. That testimony costs not a single Patriot missile. And it is worth thousands of geopolitical analyses.

Perspectives: Seoul, Kyiv, and the democratic axis facing the authoritarian axis

Two countries on the borders of the same system

South Korea and Ukraine share a geography of risk. Both border authoritarian regimes that deny their right to exist. Both have built functioning democracies facing the constant pressure of a militarized, nuclearized neighbor. And both receive Western support while remaining on the front line of a systemic confrontation between two planetary models of governance.

Their cooperation on the North Korean prisoner file is more than a humanitarian agreement. It is a political act that reinforces the solidarity of democracies in the face of the authoritarian axis Russia-China-North Korea-Iran. What Kyiv and Seoul are building together, through this quiet but historic precedent, is the demonstration that law and human dignity can resist even the most brutal logics of war.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Sources and method

This commentary draws on verified official sources: declaration by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea of June 23, 2026, reporting from Kyiv Independent and Ukrainska Pravda, statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk of May 13, 2026, and South Korean intelligence data on North Korean deployments in Russia. No figure was extrapolated beyond what primary sources establish.

Uncertainties and limits

The outcome of the Seoul foreign ministers meeting on June 30 was not yet known at time of writing. The nominal identities of the two North Korean prisoners have not been disclosed by Ukrainian authorities. The exact number of North Korean soldiers still present in Russia in June 2026 remains classified. The columnist has no direct access to the prisoners or to the ongoing diplomatic negotiations.

Sources

Primary sources

Kyiv Independent — South Korea to accept all North Korean POWs from Ukraine at their request — June 23, 2026

Ukrainska Pravda — Ukraine and South Korea to hold talks on North Korean POWs — June 23, 2026

Secondary sources

Reuters — South Korea says ready to accept North Korean POWs from Ukraine — June 23, 2026

Interfax Ukraine — UN High Commissioner: non-refoulement applies to North Korean POWs in Ukraine — May 2026

Militarnyi — North Korea deploys 14,000–15,000 troops to Kursk Oblast — 2024–2025

Kyiv Independent — North Korean POWs expressed wish to go to South Korea — December 2025