Foreign Minister Cho Hyun takes an oath at the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee national audit on Tuesday. [Yonhap]
Foreign Minister Cho Hyun takes an oath at the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee national audit on Tuesday. [Yonhap]

Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Tuesday that South Korea had received a message from Ukraine containing an apology over the diplomatic dispute triggered by Kyiv's public disclosure of the repatriation of North Korean prisoners of war.

Cho made the remarks at the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee national audit on Tuesday, responding to a question from Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Lee Ki-heon. He said he had been exchanging messages with his Ukrainian counterpart and that the Ukrainian minister appeared "very embarrassed" by the situation, adding that an apology was included in those communications.

However, Cho said the message fell short of what Seoul expected. "There is a gap between what we received and the level we had in mind, so we intend to take firm measures," he said. Asked whether South Korea's ambassador to Ukraine, Park Hee-chang, should be recalled — as Lee had suggested — Cho said that option was "among those under review."

On why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had chosen to publicly announce the POW repatriation, Cho offered a personal interpretation. "I suspect he wanted to demonstrate at the UN that he had acted in a manner befitting a liberal democratic state," he said, adding that the view was his own.

Separately, on the demilitarized zone land mine explosion, Cho responded to a question from Democratic Party lawmaker Woo Won-shik, who suggested that South and North Korea and the UN Command jointly manage the coordinates of the MDL. "I agree on the need for that," Cho said. He added, however, that North Korea had not responded to South Korea's requests, and that Seoul was working out how to bring Pyongyang to the table. "Making firm demands on North Korea and managing the situation so it does not escalate unnecessarily are two sides of the same coin," he said. "We will continue to work toward that end."


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