From Kyiv to Korea. How the shockwaves of war reverberated across Eurasia

Illustration by Andrzej Zaręba

The conflict that has shattered the post-war peace in Europe has likewise opened up the possibility for fundamental shifts in Northeast Asia’s geopolitical order. Burgeoning cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang in light of developments in Ukraine risks fundamentally altering the geopolitical landscape, a fact that in turn prompted debate in Seoul as to how South Korea can navigate the ensuing challenges to its own geopolitical standing.

Indeed, for Koreans, whereas the bloodshed on the Korean Peninsula heralded the beginning of the Cold War and the division of the Korean nation, the Russian war against Ukraine has likewise taken on great significance for both North and South Korea as they seek to navigate the uncertainties of what is increasingly referred to in the peninsula as an emerging “New Cold War”. For the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea), the war in Ukraine is primarily about how the two Koreas can navigate the strategic shifts in the post-war global order that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought about. The two Koreas’ responses to the war in Ukraine, however, could not be more different. While the DPRK has come out in full-throated support of Russia’s invasion, the ROK has taken a more cautious approach in its reaction to the war, balancing its fundamental pro-western alignment and subtly supporting Kyiv, while attempting to maintain cordial if somewhat distant relations with Russia.

North Korea’s view of the war  

Whereas many of the countries that have not come out in full support of Ukraine have taken a somewhat neutral or passive stance toward Russia’s invasion, the DPRK has proven to be one of the most fervent supporters of Moscow’s invasion. The North Korean foreign ministry and state media have regularly published statements expressing unconditional backing for Russia’s actions, yet the starkest example of Pyongyang’s support for the Kremlin’s aggression came in September 2023, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed his backing of the invasion directly to Vladimir Putin himself.

It is clear that Pyongyang, which had largely paid lip service to Russia over the past three decades since the end of the Cold War, is now sidling up to Russia for its own advantage. The primary reason behind Pyongyang’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that the fallout Moscow has faced since early 2022 has put the DPRK and the Russian Federation in similar positions of international isolation. More specifically, the Kremlin’s estrangement from much of the world has now placed Moscow in a position to help spearhead the unravelling of international sanctions against the DPRK.

Moscow had long maintained that it adheres to sanctions against the DPRK, pushing back against allegations to the contrary. Months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Georgy Zinoviev, Russia’s top diplomat for Asia-Pacific affairs, stated that Russia continued to abide by international sanctions against Pyongyang “as a responsible member of the international community”. Furthermore, when North Korea’s ambassador to Russia Sin Hong Chol met with officials from the then-self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics in August 2022, the Kremlin responded to insinuations that North Korean citizens would work there in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2397 by stating that this would be legally acceptable. This is because Russia considered them at the time to be independent, non-UN member states, and as such were not beholden to such provisions.

Maintaining the pretense of sanctions compliance was likely the motivating factor behind North Korea’s reported sale of weapons to Russia’s Wagner Group, an organisation whose very existence the Kremlin had long refused to acknowledge. After Ukrainian forces managed to obtain an intercepted shipment of weapons from North Korea destined for use by Russian forces as reported in July 2023, it is now beyond reasonable doubt that the Kremlin has been complicit in violating UN Security Council Resolution 2270, which amounts to an arms embargo against North Korea. The September 2023 summit between Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, which drew ample assertions and speculation that Russia would seek weapons from North Korea to use in Ukraine, has only increased fears about the potential trajectory of cooperation between North Korea and Russia. To be sure, Kim and Putin did not issue any public statement on the nature or results of their meeting. Yet the fact that several North Korean military officials accompanied Kim to Russia only a month after Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the DPRK to inspect North Korean ballistic missiles indicates that some form of cooperation between the two countries in the defence realm is highly probable. If nothing else, North Korea’s apparent willingness to step up and aid Russia’s war shows that the heavily-sanctioned pariah state has little to no fear concerning the consequences of aiding and abetting the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.

South Korea’s view of the war

For the ROK, Seoul’s response to the war has long taken the form of cautious yet unmistakable support for Kyiv. ROK President Yoon Suk Yeol became the first South Korean president ever to visit Ukraine in July 2023. In contrast to the steady military support Europe and the US have provided Ukraine, South Korea has been more cautious in its approach to military assistance to Kyiv. Seoul has contended with external pressure from both Kyiv and Washington to provide lethal weapons, but has thus far refused to do so, citing domestic law prohibiting the sale of weapons to warring countries. This, however, has not stopped the ROK from selling arms to Poland, with planned combined military exercises between the Polish and ROK armed forces also on the horizon.

In spite of this reticence to arm Ukraine directly, the ROK has consistently offered its assistance in helping Ukraine recover from the destruction Russia’s invasion has wrought. Indeed, South Korea itself is a model of post-war recovery. Having faced utter destruction as a result of the direct armed conflict with the DPRK from 1950 to 1953, the ROK transformed within a generation from being an aid recipient to a donor country. This experience is lost on neither the Koreans offering their assistance to Ukraine nor their Ukrainian partners. At the time of writing, Seoul had pledged official development assistance (ODA) amounting to 2.3 billion US dollars, with 300 million to be provided in 2024, and the rest to be granted to Ukraine in the form of long-term, low interest loans. This aid provision follows a steadily-increasing amount of financial aid that Seoul has provided to Kyiv since 2022. Furthermore, South Korean government and political officials have been in regular contact with Ukrainian government and civil society figures to discuss collaboration concerning post-war recovery.

Aside from these tangible manifestations of assistance to Ukraine, the ROK has also offered other subtle yet powerful forms of support, including within the Korean language itself. In March 2022, Ukraine’s embassy in Seoul issued a request to Korean language regulators to change the transliteration of Ukrainian place names in Korean to correspond to Ukrainian, rather than Russian, pronunciation. The request prompted discussions between the ROK foreign ministry and the National Institute of Korean Language, leading to an official change in the transliteration of Ukrainian place names in Korean used in the ROK. Thus, the Ukrainian capital, long rendered as “Ki-ep” in Korean became “Ki-yi-woo”. Seoul’s adherence to the Ukrainian ambassador’s request is more than a mere polite attitude toward Ukrainian sensitivities. Just before the change, one major national ROK news outlet described Korea’s use of the Russian-based pronunciation for the Ukrainian capital as akin to English speakers continuing to refer to Seoul by its Japanese name even after Korea’s independence from Japan in 1945. Given the bitterness with which Koreans remember the Japanese colonial period, it is hard to believe this parallel did not at least partially factor in to Seoul’s decision.

Nevertheless, within the ROK’s academic, civil society and media communities, there has been robust debate over the nature and extent of South Korea’s support for Ukraine, with many solidly opposing the Yoon administration’s support for the West at the expense of South Korea’s relations with Russia. Public debate between those who support and oppose the ROK taking steps such as providing lethal military aid to Ukraine and aligning with NATO is roughly divided between the left and right ends of the political spectrum. For many on the South Korean political right, support for Kyiv, up to and including providing lethal military support, is primarily about the democratic ROK contributing to efforts that stem the tide of an emerging bloc of authoritarian powers. Those who support Seoul taking a firmly pro-western stance cite Seoul’s responsibility to “pay it forward” for all the assistance the ROK received from the international community during Korea’s own conflict. Furthermore, they see the emergence of a “New Cold War”, with China, North Korea and Russia forming a concert of authoritarian nations, as a key reason for the ROK to draw closer to Washington and its allies over Ukraine.

On the political left, the primary concern regarding South Korea’s position vis-à-vis the war in Ukraine is how explicit support for Kyiv at the expense of Seoul’s relationship with Moscow could affect inter-Korean relations. For the ROK, relations with Russia have not been particularly important in and of themselves. Nevertheless, as far back as the 1980s, South Korean policymakers have viewed building relations with the Kremlin as part of a strategic bid to foster economic cooperation between Russia and the two Koreas so as to eventually reunify, or at least reduce the divisions between, the DPRK and the ROK. For the ROK’s progressive left in particular, a desire not to damage ties with Russia so that Moscow could help with inter-Korean reconciliation has been a primary point of concern.

One of the main reasons for this divide along the political spectrum, as research on Korean national identity from Hyungryeol Kim of Seoul National University and Stephanie K. Kim of Georgetown University shows, is that national identity in the ROK is roughly divided between a closer identification with the Republic of Korea on the political right, and a tighter identification with the Korean ethnic nation on the political left. For South Korea, therefore, the primary question at hand is how, in a reshaped geopolitical order rising from the ashes of Ukraine extending to Northeast Asia, the ROK should approach the greater fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With the strengthening of DPRK-Russia ties potentially posing an increased threat to South Korea’s own security, it is not a question for armchair theorising, but a very real policy issue to be addressed in a context of limited time and diplomatic space.

The closing distance from Kyiv to Korea

Russia’s geographic thrust from the borders of Ukraine to the Korean Peninsula, and in particular Russia’s raised profile in Northeast Asia, means that the geopolitical distance from Kyiv to Korea is shrinking. The fact that Russia has received unabashed support from North Korea over its invasion of Ukraine, potentially for the sake of the unravelling of the international sanctions regime against Pyongyang, heralds a tectonic shift in the post-war global order. A strengthened North Korea-Russia relationship in and of itself may matter little to Kyiv, but the cohesion between Moscow and Pyongyang that it has brought about ties developments in Eastern Europe to Northeast Asia as well. Likewise, the nature and extent of Seoul’s support for Kyiv may not be as impactful for Ukraine as that of Kyiv’s European and American partners. Yet the fact that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted so much debate in Seoul clearly demonstrates the reverberations this war has had across Eurasia.   

Thus far, the ROK has maintained a steady course of providing non-lethal aid and financial assistance for Ukraine’s reconstruction, while also sidestepping sensitive issues such as providing lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian armed forces. As a liberal democracy largely aligned with the West, it is entirely possible that during South Korea’s next presidential election, the ROK electorate may choose a leader less inclined to support Ukraine than President Yoon Suk Yeol. Yet no matter what happens, geography will not isolate the Korean Peninsula from the effects of war in Ukraine. Indeed, if North Korea’s material support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine translates into material Russian support for the DPRK in turn, violence in Europe risks encouraging violence in Northeast Asia.

Anthony V. Rinna is a senior editor and translator with the Sino-NK research group, where he specialises in Korea-Russia relations. His views on Korea-Russia ties have been cited in media outlets including CNN and the Wall Street Journal. He has lived in South Korea since 2014.

North Korea, Russia, Russia's war against Ukraine, South Korea, Ukraine