Zelenskyy adviser denies Ukraine agreed with Seoul to keep transfer of North Korean POWs secret

Dmytro Lytvyn, communications adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has denied that Ukraine breached an agreement with South Korea not to disclose information about the transfer of two North Korean prisoners of war.

Source: Lytvyn in response to a post by Oksana Torop, media adviser to Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine's ambassador to the UK

Details: Torop had written that Zelenskyy went to New York and publicly announced the transfer of the POWs to South Korea. "But the thing is, there was an agreement between the countries and a non-disclosure agreement… And yet we know about it. A show, hype, a striking effect for a striking picture. Here we go," she wrote.

Lytvyn replied under the post that this was not true. "There was no such agreement. That is not true. And it would be wrong to conceal where particular prisoners are being sent," he said.

Previously: South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said that Ukraine had breached a non-disclosure agreement by publicly revealing that two North Korean prisoners of war had been sent to South Korea, and that making this information public could lead to numerous problems.

Background:

• In 2025, the Ukrainian military captured two North Korean soldiers in Russia's Kursk Oblast.
• It later emerged that a fake military ID discovered on a captured North Korean soldier in Kursk Oblast had been issued in the name of a real person from the Russian Republic of Tyva (Tuva).
• During his address to the UN General Assembly on 23 September, Zelenskyy mentioned that Ukraine had recently sent two North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea.
• He also said one of the North Korean soldiers had tried to kill himself after realising he had been captured, noting that this reflected the way people are indoctrinated in North Korea.
• Zelenskyy also addressed the representatives of the 47 countries whose citizens Russia is using in its war against Ukraine, urging them to look after their people and prevent Russia from drawing them into the war and sending them to fight on a foreign front.

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Originally reported by Ukrainska Pravda by STANISLAV POHORILOV. Read the full story at the source.