SEOUL, November 29. /TASS/. Ukraine is not an ally of South Korea and has no grounds to demand to supply it with weapons, the Hankyoreh newspaper wrote.

"Why does Ukraine, which is no ally to South Korea, feel so entitled to demand weapons support from South Korea?" reporter Kwon Hyuk-chul said in the article. He recalled that Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov met with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and his counterpart Kim Yong-hyun in Seoul on Wednesday. The Ukrainian delegation, according to some media reports, asked to sell weapons to Kiev, but South Korean authorities did not disclose the content of the meeting.

The journalist criticized the comparison of the situation in Ukraine with the Korean War, which is used by South Korea to explain its calls for aid to Kiev. Kwon Hyuk-chul recalled that Ukraine was part of the USSR and that pilots of Ukrainian origin took part in battles with the American Air Force in the skies over the Korean Peninsula. According to him, the photos proving this are exhibited in the military museum in Kiev.

The author of the article recalled that in September the Ukrainian ambassador to Tokyo visited the Yasukuni Shrine, considered in East Asia as a symbol of Japanese militarism, of which the Korean Peninsula was a victim. Meanwhile, as the article recalls, South Korea and Russia had previously cooperated on the development of the Shingung portable surface-to-air missile and the Cheongung surface-to-air missile. "Interestingly enough, the air defense weapons Ukraine wishes to obtain are the very missiles Russia helped [South] Korea make," Kwon Hyuk-chul emphasized.

Debts and cooperation

"Ukraine has categorized North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia as a threat to the national security of both Ukraine and South Korea, but the security threats faced by the two countries are inherently different," the article said. However, according to the journalist, South Korea "owes it [Ukraine] nothing in terms of security," and the confidence of the Ukrainian authorities stemming from their "arrogance" is the result of "the folly of the Yoon Suk-yeol administration."

The journalist explained that the alleged deployment of North Korean troops to Russia is Ukraine's problem, while South Korea's problem is preventing Russia and North Korea from getting closer in the military-technical sphere. "Giving Ukraine weapons won’t curb or stop Moscow and Pyongyang from getting any closer, and it’s clear it would end up undoing the last fail-safe preventing military cooperation between the two," a former diplomat who served as ‘ambassador to a key country’ told the newspaper. "If South Korea sends weapons to Ukraine, Russia will no longer care about or pay attention to Seoul and can accelerate its military cooperation with North Korea," he concluded.

On November 24, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said in an interview with TASS that South Korea's arms deliveries to Ukraine would finally ruin relations between Seoul and Moscow, and Russia would respond in any way necessary. Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations of illegal military-technical cooperation with North Korea.