S. Korea warns it can send arms to Ukraine after reports of North's troops in Russia

SEOUL, South Korea -- South Korea warned Tuesday it could consider supplying weapons to Ukraine in response to North Korea allegedly dispatching troops to Russia, as both North Korea and Russia denied the movements. NATO's secretary general said that would mark a “significant escalation.”

South Korea's statement was apparently meant to pressure Russia against bringing in North Korean troops for its war against Ukraine. South Korean officials worry that Russia may reward North Korea by giving it sophisticated weapons technologies that can boost the North’s nuclear and missile programs that target South Korea.

In an emergency National Security Council meeting, top South Korean officials condemned North Korea’s alleged dispatch of troops as “a grave security threat” to South Korea and the international community. They described North Korea as “a criminal group” that forces its youths to serve as Russian mercenaries for an unjustifiable war, South Korea's presidential office said in a statement.

The officials agreed to take phased countermeasures, linking the level of their responses to progress in Russian-North Korean military cooperation, according to the statement.

Possible steps include diplomatic, economic and military options, and South Korea could consider sending both defensive and offensive weapons to Ukraine, a senior South Korean presidential official told reporters on condition of anonymity in a background briefing.

The official said North Korea could attempt to get high-tech Russian technologies to perfect its nuclear missiles. The official said Russia's possible help for North Korea's efforts to modernize its outdated conventional weapons systems and acquire a space-based surveillance system would pose a serious security threat.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, South Korea has joined U.S.-led sanctions against Moscow and shipped humanitarian and financial support to Kyiv. But it has avoided directly supplying arms to Ukraine in line with its policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflicts.

South Korea’s spy agency said last week it had confirmed that North Korea sent 1,500 special operation forces to Russia this month. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his government had intelligence that 10,000 North Korea soldiers were being prepared to join invading Russian forces.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said later Tuesday that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is sending experts to Brussels soon to brief ambassadors at the 32-nation military alliance.

“That will now happen early next week, and then we will see whether North Korea is indeed, or not, supporting Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine,” Rutte said. “If that would be the case, if they would be sending troops to Ukraine, that would mark a significant escalation."

North Korea and Russia have been sharply boosting their cooperation in the past two years. In June, they signed a major defense deal requiring both countries to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked. South Korea said at the time it would consider sending arms to Ukraine, a similar statement that it made Tuesday.

South Korea's spy agency said that North Korea had sent more than 13,000 containers of artillery, missiles and other conventional arms to Russia since August 2023 to replenish its dwindling weapons stockpiles.

North Korea and Russia have denied the North Korean troop deployment as well as the purported weapons transfer.

At a U.N. Security Council meeting Monday, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed the South Korean assertion as well as Western allegations of Iran supplying Russia with missiles and China providing arms components. He accused the West of “circulating scaremongering with Iranian, Chinese and Korean bogeymen, each one of which is more absurd than the one before.”

At a separate U.N. committee meeting, a North Korean diplomat said his delegation feels no need to comment on the troop dispatch, calling it “groundless, stereotype rumors aimed at smearing the image” of the North and undermining the legitimate cooperation between two sovereign states.

Also Tuesday, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called South Korean and Ukraine governments “lunatics” as she slammed them for making “reckless remarks against nuclear weapons states.”

The U.S. and NATO haven’t confirmed North Korea’s troop deployment.

U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood said that if true, the North Korean troop dispatch marks “a dangerous and highly concerning development” and noted that the U.S. was “consulting with our allies and partners on such a dramatic move.”

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Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report.