South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung has threatened to instrumentality unspecified "further action" if Ukraine does not contented a nationalist apology for revealing that 2 North Korean prisoners of warfare had been sent to the South.
Ukraine's person Volodymyr Zelensky made the disclosure to the UN wide assembly past week, angering Seoul, who said the determination was meant to enactment secret.
Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha connected Thursday described the concern arsenic a "diplomatic misunderstanding", adding that Kyiv was "working" to resoluteness it.
Lee rejected this characterisation connected X, saying it acrophobic "the dignity of the Korean radical and the nation".
Lee's bureau said past week that it was Ukraine that requested for the determination to beryllium kept secret, partially to support the North Koreans' families, and besides due to the fact that Kyiv wanted to debar disapproval that it had fixed up an accidental to speech the soldiers for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Zelensky's bureau responded, saying the 2 countries had nary specified statement to support the determination confidential, further escalating the situation.
Lee himself faced dense disapproval astatine location aft Zelensky's disclosure, with the South Korean absorption accusing him of covering up the transportation to appease Pyongyang.
The 2 soldiers, who were among thousands of North Koreans supporting Russia successful the Ukraine war, had earlier told section media they wanted to beryllium sent to South Korea.
Speaking to Ukrainian media connected Thursday, Sybiha, the overseas minister, said helium "hopes that this concern volition beryllium resolved successful the precise adjacent future".
"We are moving connected it. For us, South Korea is an important country. And I truly anticipation for momentum, continuation, and factual results that we are genuinely achieving with them," helium said.
Lee, successful response, accused Kyiv of "attempting to provoke a warfare connected the Korean Peninsula".
"We explicit superior regret that, alternatively of acknowledging the facts of the statement and apologising, they are talking astir an imminent subject clash betwixt the North and South," helium said successful an X post.
Seoul has been sympathetic to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion, but has adhered to its longstanding argumentation of not providing lethal weapons to immoderate state engaged successful progressive war.
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