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They both may be lying, but North and South Korea agree on one point when it comes to the war in Ukraine: Neither wants to be revealed publicly as exporting artillery shells for either side — the North Koreans to the Russians, and the South Koreans to the Ukrainians via their American ally.
At stake is the whole question of their involvement in a war that means nothing to either of them but is all-important to their vital friends and allies. The United States is bound in a longstanding treaty alliance with South Korea, and Russia is completely on North Korea’s side as an old-time Korean War ally. Russia has blocked United Nations Security Council resolutions condemning North Korea for recent missile tests, in return for which North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has loudly supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Actually going a critical step further and arming either side is quite another matter.
South Korea’s defense ministry says its “policy stance” remains “unchanged” — that the “ROK [Republic of Korea] will not provide lethal weapons to Ukraine.” The South issued that denial after the Wall Street Journal reported a scheme under which South Korea would ship artillery shells to the Americans, who would then pass them on to their Ukrainian friends.
North Korea is equally emphatic in its denial of a Pentagon report that the North was providing artillery shells much needed for Russian forces, reportedly in short supply. “We once again make clear that we have never had ‘arms dealings’ with Russia and that we have no plan to do so in the future,” said the North’s defense ministry in a report carried in English by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency.
The ministry denounced the American claim, first made by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, as another “hostile attempt to tarnish the image of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] in the international arena by invoking the illegal ‘sanctions resolution’ of the U.N. Security Council.”
Russia was, if anything, more emphatic. The Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, slammed the claim as “fake news” in an all-encompassing denial: “Everything said by American representatives is a lie from the beginning to the end.
