Chief Spokesperson Choi Bo-yun criticizes recall of ambassador to Ukraine

Political parties clash over South Korea-Ukraine diplomatic row

PPP warns postwar reconstruction, defense cooperation opportunities at risk

President Lee Jae Myung walks alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after a group photo at the G7 summit in Canada in 2025. [Yonhap]
President Lee Jae Myung walks alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after a group photo at the G7 summit in Canada in 2025. [Yonhap]

The People Power Party on Sunday urged the government to avoid emotionally driven diplomacy and take a measured approach amid the ongoing diplomatic friction between South Korea and Ukraine, which prompted Seoul to recall its ambassador to Kyiv.

PPP Chief Spokesperson Choi Bo-yun said in a commentary that day that the Lee Jae Myung administration had recalled its ambassador to Ukraine, calling it "the highest level of protest short of severing ties — the first ambassador recall in 18 years."

Choi said the government had previously wielded the same measure in 2008 over Japan's Dokdo provocation. "That sword was drawn to defend our territory," she said. "This time, it was drawn to defend the president's pride."

Choi went on to cite the government's response to two earlier incidents — the attack on the HMM Namu in May near the Strait of Hormuz by what is believed to have been an Iranian missile, and the injury of South Korean soldiers last month from a North Korean land mine explosion along the MDL — before contrasting that response with the current stance toward Ukraine. "Ukraine is the country that protected the transfer of North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea," she said.

"Russia pressured Ukraine to hand over two prisoners in exchange for dozens, but Ukraine refused," Choi said. "What this government returned in kind was not gratitude but a scolding. The president personally posted on social media that the matter 'cannot be overlooked' and spoke of 'additional measures' — and now has gone so far as to recall the ambassador."

"This is a government that held its tongue when our soldiers were wounded and our ship was attacked, yet now lodges its strongest protest against a country that helped us," Choi said. "It treads carefully around Pyongyang and shouts at Kyiv."

She added that "anger, too, has a proper order of priority," saying the president's first target of outrage should be "those who buried mines under our soldiers' feet and aimed missiles at our ship."

Choi said that if Ukraine had acted improperly, the matter should be resolved "calmly and precisely through diplomatic channels — that is the commonsense approach, the right way to treat an ally."

"But the president led with emotion and only deepened the rift," she said. "The public apology he demanded was never secured, the channel for dialogue has been left empty, and the opportunities for postwar reconstruction and defense cooperation are now in jeopardy."

The dispute stems from a series of moves by Ukraine: it unilaterally disclosed the repatriation of North Korean prisoners of war to South Korea, then claimed there had been no bilateral agreement to keep the matter confidential, and cited some foreign media reports to suggest that South Korea had been exporting petroleum products to Russia despite international sanctions.

In response, the government decided Thursday to recall Ambassador Park Ki-chang from Kyiv, and Park returned to South Korea on Saturday morning.

The recall has since set off a political battle at home.

The Democratic Party of Korea took particular aim at People Power Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won, who had sent a letter of gratitude to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the repatriation of North Korean prisoners of war. The party said Na had "defended Ukraine for breaking its promise of confidentiality while pinning a groundless accusation on our government — that it was trying to send the North Korean prisoners to their deaths — for simply holding Ukraine accountable."

Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Byung-joo also lashed out, saying, "Sending a letter of thanks to Zelensky, who insulted an ungrateful South Korea — whose side is this lawmaker on?" Kim drew a comparison to Yi Wan-yong, a figure widely condemned in Korea for collaborating with Japanese colonial rule, and demanded that Na "immediately stop this act of betraying the nation."

Na fired back, saying Democratic Party lawmakers had "rushed in like a suicide squad" over her letter to the Ukrainian president. She accused the Lee Jae Myung administration of "turning a blind eye to the lives of our compatriots for the sake of North Korea's sensitivities" and called it "a truly hardline pro-North Korea regime."

Choi also said in her commentary that "diplomacy is judged not by the intensity of one's anger but by its results," and urged the president to "set aside his emotions and return to the table of diplomacy."


shindw@heraldcorp.com