South Korea’s Defense Ministry has assured that Seoul has no plans to send lethal weaponry to Ukraine.
“There is no change in the South Korean government’s commitment not to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons,” the ministry said in a press statement Friday.
The statement followed reports in US media on Thursday that Seoul and Washington were negotiating a clandestine agreement under which the US would buy 100,000 rounds of 155mm artillery shells from South Korea and send them to Ukraine, enabling Kiev to engage in “at least several weeks” of “intensive combat.” (The report left out the part about Ukrainian forces using their Western-sourced artillery to indiscriminately target civilian settlements in Donbass and elsewhere).
Seoul claims that negotiations for the shells were being conducted “under the premise that the US is the end user.”
“In order to make up for the shortages of 155mm ammunition inventories in the US, negotiations are ongoing between the US and Korean companies to export ammunition,” South Korea’s Defense Ministry said in its statement.
A US official confirmed in a separate report Friday that talks on the shell sale were under way, and that they could be purchased using cash from the "Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative" slush fund. The anonymous official emphasized that media reports on the matter could disrupt the deal.
This week’s reporting on Washington’s plans to transfer weapons sourced in South Korea to Ukraine is the second time that a NATO power has been caught up in a scandal involving Seoul in less than two months.
In late September, Czech media reported that Seoul was planning to transfer up to $2.9 billion worth of weaponry to Kiev via the Czech Republic, with the arms paid for by Washington, and including South Korea’s Chiron man-portable air defense system.
In July, Poland penned agreements with South Korean defense giants including Hyundai Rotem, Hanwha Defense, and Korea Aerospace Industries for the delivery of a thousand K2 tanks, over 600 K9 howitzers, and three squadrons of FA-50 fighter jets. Last week, Warsaw and Seoul signed a $3.55 billion contract for the sale of South Korean K239 Chunmoo multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) to Poland.
In addition to serving as a major transit state for NATO weapons deliveries to Ukraine, Poland has delivered nearly $2 billion in weapons aid to Kiev itself, including T-72 tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, rocket launchers, strike and reconnaissance drones, mortars, small arms, and a range of ammunition. However, it remains to be seen whether the arms purchased by Warsaw from South Korea will end up in Ukraine.
Putin’s Warning
Amid the bevy of news reporting on the weapons transfers, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol assured Russia late last month that Seoul had not sent “any” weapons to Ukraine, and that its support has been limited to “humanitarian” deliveries.
“We have been in solidarity with the international community for peaceful, humanitarian aid to Ukraine and have not provided any lethal weapons, but that’s in any regard a matter of our sovereignty,” Yoon said. "We are putting efforts to maintain peaceful, good relations with every country in the world, including Russia,” he added.
Yoon’s assurances followed a warning by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who urged Seoul not to become entangled in the Ukraine crisis in a speech on October 27.
“We have very good relations with the Republic of Korea and we have always had an opportunity to conduct dialogue with both the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. However, we have learned now that the Republic of Korea has decided to supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. This will destroy our relations. How would the Republic of Korea behave if we resumed cooperation with North Korea in this area? Would you be happy about this?” Putin asked.
Depleted NATO Stocks
Reports of the US using its South Korean allies’ military-industrial complex for the NATO proxy conflict against Russia in Ukraine comes amid growing concerns that American and European weapons stocks have been severely depleted after the delivery of tens of billions of dollars-worth of arms and ammo to Kiev.
“The military stocks of most member states has been, I wouldn’t say exhausted, but depleted in a high proportion, because we have been providing all of capacity to the Ukrainians,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told European lawmakers in September.
Last month, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin called on NATO to “dig deep and provide additional capability” to Ukraine, assuring that Washington has “pushed to galvanize our industrial bases to fire up production for the systems to defend Ukraine, even while meeting our own security needs.”
Apparently, part of all this diligent “work” involved outsourcing production to NATO’s allies in Asia.
Cold War Precedents
Reports of clandestine agreements between South Korea and NATO for deliveries of weapons to Ukraine aren’t the first time that Washington and its allies have been caught engaging in such shady behavior. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, notwithstanding a US arms embargo against the Islamic Republic, and using that money to fund an ultra-right CIA-backed rebel group in Nicaragua, overriding a congressional block on such assistance. The scandal was uncovered in 1985, with most of the officials involved receiving slap-on-the-wrist fines and suspended prison sentences.
The secret delivery of weapons through third countries was common practice during the Cold War, with the US and its allies sending billions of dollars in arms, including then-cutting edge Stinger missile systems, and old Soviet weapons hocked from Egypt and other ex-Soviet client states, to Afghanistan in a CIA operation known as "Operation Cyclone," with the war financed in part by a booming opium trade with the Mujahedeen.
The USSR engaged in a similar strategy when it first kicked off its aid to Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt in the 1950s (minus the CIA-style drug running), shipping $83 million worth of Soviet weaponry to Cairo through Czechoslovakia after Britain, France, and the United States refused to provide the newly-independent country with defense equipment.