Did South Korea announce it will deploy troops in Ukraine to engage in active combat against North Korean troops supporting Russia? No, that's not true: On October 30, 2024, neither U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin nor his South Korean counterpart Kim Yong-hyun said anything about it during a joint press conference about the potential engagement of North Korean troops on Russia's side in the war in Ukraine. Lead Stories found no public news reports or official information about South Korea announcing they were sending any troops to Ukraine, even though there has been speculation about it.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on October 21, 2024. It said:
South Korea will send it's troops to #Ukraine to fight the North Korea's troops supporting #Russia.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Wed Oct 30 13:55:27 2024 UTC)
The post implied that South Korea publicly confirmed that it would deploy its military to fight against North Korean troops that were allegedly already in Ukraine.
Lead Stories did not find any credible source supporting that.
The photo reused in the post was not recent and did not show South Korean troops in Ukraine. A reverse image search performed on Google and TinEye showed that it had been online long before October 2024. One place where the photo still can be accessed, as of this writing, is a December 29, 2023, article on CNN.com (archived here). It was published there with the following caption:
South Korean marines take part in the 'Ssangyong 2023 Exercise' joint landing operation by US and South Korean Marines in the south-eastern port of Pohang on March 29, 2023. Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images
On October 30, 2024, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun held a joint press conference (archived here) to address the question of North Korea and Ukraine. A Lead Stories reporter monitored it virtually.
None of the speakers said anything about the alleged deployment of South Korean troops to "fight" North Korean soldiers in Ukraine. An official transcript of the press conference is here.
Kim specifically addressed the question of monitoring units consisting of military personnel. That was prompted by previous reporting -- for example by Reuters (archived here) -- that said Seoul considered sending such groups to Ukraine. He said that those units have the limited purpose of "analysis of the trends of the modern warfare" and that South Korea had sent such groups to other conflict zones before. Kim said nothing about the alleged plan to engage in active combat with North Korean soldiers.
Austin clarified that North Korean troops -- whose presence in Russia was confirmed by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte (archived here) on October 28, 2024, and by the Pentagon (archived here) on October 29, 2024 -- were still in Russia's Kursk region and had not crossed the border with Ukraine, but expressed concerns that they could.
Besides monitoring units,
On October 29, 2024, the Korea Herald (archived here) published a news article about "the closed-door parliamentary audit of the National Intelligence Service." According to the newspaper, lawmakers asked if the NIS should deploy its personnel if North Korean soldiers are captured or surrender in Ukraine; one participant told reporters the response was, "Positively." But an earlier October 22, 2024, Yonhap article (archived here) said it would be monitoring units that would consist of intelligence officers, not additional groups.
Lead Stories searched the websites of the South Korean president, the office of the prime minister's secretariat, the national parliament, the ministry of defense and the ministry of foreign affairs, but found nothing that could be interpreted as the post on X does.The website of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed an October 29, 2024, press release (archived here) about his conversation with his South Korean counterpart, but it only discussed cooperation in broad terms. Additional searches across the president's website did not confirm the claim.
The website of the North Korean ministry of foreign affairs (archived here) said nothing about South Korean troops and Ukraine, as of this writing.
A broad search for the keywords seen here (archived here) on Google News showed predominantly articles about North Korean troops in Russia. A CNBC report (archived here) that referred to South Korean troops in reality discussed monitoring units.
A search for the Ukrainian terms seen here (archived here) across the websites indexed by Google News overwhelmingly showed stories about North Korean troops, too. A few exceptions that mentioned South Korean troops in the headlines, for example here (archived here), discussed monitoring units in the body of the article as well.
Lead Stories reached out for comments to the Office of Defense Attache at South Korea's embassy in Washington, D.C. If we get a response, this story will be updated, as appropriate.
Other Lead Stories fact checks concerning claims made about the Russian-Ukrainian war can be found here.
