Should Korea Provide Ukraine with Ammunition?
US spying reveals Korea is rebuffing requests to directly arm Ukraine. This won’t be the last time the US might request Korea to provide weapons for a conflict that would trigger a neighbor.
One of the US military documents leaked to Discord included information the US gathered by spying on South Korea by capturing signals intelligence. The document showed that Korea is skeptical about providing ammunition or other weapons to Ukraine. They are even unsure about sending bullets to the US that will likely be forwarded to Ukraine.
Seoul and Washington both said that “some” of the documents were fabricated, but they didn’t point to anything in the general summary about Korea’s refusal to provide ammunition as being inaccurate. They also said it is “untrue” that the US is spying on Korean government officials. But clearly, the US is spying on Korea. And on many other allies and adversaries. We already knew from Edward Snowden’s leaked documents that the US had wiretapped Angela Merkel, and Snowden also said they spied on Korea.
The latest revelations make things awkward for both countries, but they do not appear to include much new information on either side. Anyone could have assumed the US was spying on everybody. And it was already well known that South Korea didn’t want to provide weapons to Ukraine.
In October, President Yoon Suk-yeol aggressively denied having provided weapons. In January, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the ROK “will not send lethal weapons to Ukraine.” In early March, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said Korea still hadn’t decided to send weapons and wouldn’t do so anytime soon.
The ROK doesn’t want to harm its relations with North Korea’s neighbor Russia and risk Russia taking revenge actions to support the DPRK’s provocations. It also violates a provision of Korea’s Foreign Trade Act to provide weapons to an active battlefield.
The US, meanwhile, wants to entice as many countries as they can to provide weapons to Ukraine. The documents also included information about the US pressing for Israel to do so.
Patrick Cronin of the Hudson Institute said,
“Seoul is eager to preserve a workable relationship with Moscow, so in some way drawing down U.S. weapons in [its bases in South] Korea is more palatable than selling them directly,”
It makes sense. Korea doesn’t want Russia to win, so they are providing humanitarian aid directly to Ukraine and providing weapons to Poland.
But Korea must consider how far it is willing to go to support US objectives. This won’t be the last time the US might request Korea to provide weapons or other kinds of support for a conflict that would trigger outrage in one of Korea’s neighbors. How would Korea react to a war over Taiwan’s de facto independence?