Note: This is a long response, but it explains everything about why South Korea won’t send weapons or troops to Ukraine UNLESS tangible incentives are provided by Ukraine & the West.
To start off, North Korea is NOT sending troops and equipment to Russia because Russia is simply asking. North Korea is charging an absurd premium price for its military aid, and basically getting everything it wants. Between 2022 and 2025 alone, North Korea made $22 billion, on top of monthly foreign exchange payments for each soldier, equal to North Korea’s ENTIRE yearly GDP (estimated $20-$25 billion GDP). Then there’s large shipments of Russian food, gas/oil which North Korea needs to address hunger/malnutrition in its country, medicine, military technology and parts for things like satellite, missiles, naval warships. And it also got a formal defense pact with Russia. This is the holy grail of all mercenary deals for a isolated rogue state like North Korea.
Meanwhile, Ukraine, Europe, and the USA are asking for weapons to be donated or sold largely at par value (at most market value). And Instead of offering help to South Korea on things like satellite, missiles, etc, the USA actually refuses and/or is delaying negotiations for bigger payments and concessions from South Korea. Even now in 2026, the USA is drawing out negotiations for South Korea’s desire to pursue nuclear propulsion submarines.
South Korea is NOT neglecting its military or economy to the rising North Korean and Chinese threat. In fact, South Korea has steadily shifted its total trade (imports nad exports) away from China for years, trading more with Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Indonesia, etc), India, and USA/West, while always ramping up its military spending to new record levels year after year (military spending fell only once in 1999, during the IMF/Asian Financial Crisis)
Historically, South Korea post Late 1970s/early 1980s was actually restricted by the USA in pursuing strong military deterrence, what with the US-Korea Missile Guideline restrictions that heavily restricted South Korea’s missile ranges and warhead payload, restrictions on military satellite programs, etc. South Korea’s domestic nuclear submarine program Project 362 was cancelled around 2004 due to outside pressure by countries like the USA.
the secret “362 Project” aimed at developing a nuclear-powered submarine was canceled due to U.S. pressure and political concerns
South Korea has paid the USA in concessions and payments each time these restrictiosns were removed; teh 2017 removal of missile warhead pyaload limits were agreed by the USA at the SAME DAY South Korea’ gov. agreed to a adjustment in the US-Korea FTA for Trump to sell as a victory at home. in May 21, 2021, the Biden Administration agreed to remove Korea’s missile restrictions entirely, but just a few days later, South Korea gave a benefits package to the USA and agreed to making large investments in the USA, joint research for core technologies, helping the USA produce COVID-19 vaccines, etc.
Whenever South Korea wants the right to spend ITS OWN money and industries developing weapons and defense systems to protect itself from North Korea, China, Russia, etc, the USA demanded payments and concessions. South Korea is NOT being offered any strategic concession or tradeoff by the USA or the West right now for sending weapons and other aid to Ukraine. North Korea is getting everything it wants and more – food, oil, payments equal to its yearly GDP, military technology, defense pact guarantee by Russia, etc. So demanding South Korea to help Ukraine more because North Korea is helping Russia is a disingenuous comparison because North Korea got the mother of all benefits packages (the financial payments value is literally worth its yearly GDP). Meanwhile, South Korea weakens itself in the worst geopolitical position for any modern Western nation if it does so….for very little.
And North Korea isn’t blindly sending troops. After the initial 10,000~12,000 combat troops, North Korea did NOT send combat troops for Russia, instead sending around 1,000 sappers, 5,000 construction workers/engineers, weapons technicians, etc. Why? Because North Korea suffered over 6,000 combat troop casualties, literally half of its combat troops or more. Kim Jong Un is doing PR ops with families of dead and wounded soldiers to avoid domestic outcry; the Ukrainian claims of North Korea sending 30,000~50,000 more troops is an exaggeration, and lacks corroboration by US and South Korean military intelligence . North Korea’s track record since 2022 shows it wants money and benefits, not dead soldiers. Russia WANTS more combat troops from North Korea, but North Korea doesn’t want that.
North Korea is playing textbook mercenary tactics mentioned by Niccolo Machiavelli: charge extremely high payments, fight as little as possilbe (avoid attrition), and milk the conflict for all its worth. This is NOT a battle or aid over ideology or alignment.
Then there’s South Korea’s geopolitical position. South Korea has literally the worst geopolitical position out of any advanced economy: it is surrounded by a hostile nuclear rogue state (North Korea), a nuclear superpower (China), a major nuclear military power (Russia), and Japan, a country it has enormous historic and modern tensions, territory disputes, as well as being economic rivals. South Korea’s geopolitical position of being surrounded means it cannot allow significant ramp up of aid or weapons to Ukraine without jeopardizing its own security position, unless it has strategic payments and incentives to offset it. And it has not been offered anything to offset this.
Instead, Trump’s USA as of August 2026 has withdrawn the last aircraft carrier in Asia Pacific to deploy into the Middle East for the 2026 Iran War. If anything, South Korea now has LESS reason to send more aid to Ukraine because *the USA is leaving its Asian allies more vulnerable. *
Every dollar of aid, every weapon, etc sent to Ukraine is one less dollar invested in South Korea’s own defenses and weapons against China/North Korea. North Korea is getting a massive benefits package. South Korea is offered no tradeoff to offset this risk.
Some cite the Korean War as a reason for why South Korea should send weapons and troops to Ukraine, since the West bailed out South Korea. Unfortunately, the problem was that this was precipitated precisely because the USA refused to let South Korea acquire heavy weapons and modernize its military like North Korea was (even US forces on Korea lacked armor units and anti tank weaponry), despite US military intelligence (U-2) noticing that North Korea was getting hundreds of T-34 tanks, heavy artillery, etc from the Soviets. The USSR refused to grant permission for North Korea to invade dozens of times, but after testing the waters repeatedly with DPRK military aid and seeing the USA was doing nothing while North Korea gained a massive military edge, Stalin relented.
And nearly every single nation that sent tangible troops and aid to South Korea during the Korean War did so to secure their own national interests and benefits (the only real exception being Ethiopia which is NOT in the West)
Declassified British cabinet papers CAB 128/18 and memoirs indicated the USA was pressuring Britain to send troops and supplies to the Korean War as it did not want to bleed alone, and the British government under Attlee did so to secure continued American aid
Kevin and other British leaders were convinced that supporting U.S. military aims, even when they did not align with British values, was a prerequisite for their continued aid……London was soon threatened by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson that “failure to support the US would have grave consequences in the congress on the eve of Eisenhower’s crucial report on NATO defense needs.” Britain quickly acquiesced…..
Turkey was given NATO membership in February 1952 due to its participation in the Korean War, as indicated by Turkish academics, and also explicited outlined in the official NATO website
In 1950, Türkiye sent troops in support of the United Nations to defend South Korea from the North Korean invasion across the 38th parallel. As a result of growing threats to security in Europe, it joined NATO in 1952.
Francisco Franco of Spain was ostracized by the West imemdaitely after WW2 for being fascist, undemocratic, and its ties with Nazi Germany. The UN formally condemned Franco in Resolution 39 in 1946, and Spain was excluded from the Marshall Plan at first.. Franco used the Korean WAr as a way to mend ties and gain WEstern (US) aid and support; the 1953 Pact of Madrid happened specifically because Spain took a transaction approach to sending aid in the Korean War
The “rehabilitation” of the Francoist regime was formally completed in 1950, following the outbreak of the Korean War in June….Upon learning of North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, the Spanish government quickly sent a note to the U.S. offering “to assist the United States in halting communism by sending forces to Korea.”…..the following month, the Senate, at the urging of Democrat Pat McCarran—a member of the Spanish Lobby created by José Félix de Lequerica, Franco’s unofficial representative in Washington—authorized the Export-Import Bank to grant Spain a $62.5 million loan….On November 4, 1950, the UN General Assembly, with strong U.S. support and French and British abstentions, revoked the December 1946 resolution condemning Franco’s regime…..
Even nations like Netherlands were strongarmed into sending troops and aid by the USA due to its dependence on US aid like the Marshall Plan.
Existing literature reveals that the Dutch cabinet was not willing to participate in the Korean War, but eventually decided to send a battalion of volunteers and a total of 6 warships to Korea after pressure from the United States
Even then, the number of troops and supplies sent were small (hundreds or thousands at most, other than Britain which needed US aid and money just to keep its empire at the time) relative to the Western nations’ economy and population. This makes sense, because no state burns itself to save another country, and the Korean War participation was transactional from the start. Roughly 95% or so of the Western coalition troops consisted of South Korea and the USA for a reason.
The rest of the nations combined sent just enough troops (<5%) and supplies to secure their own national interests (payments and benefits from the USA), and refused to escalate further and get involved in a brutal meatgrinder.
TLDR: Korean War is NOT a reason for South Korea’s government and military to send military aid to Ukraine in the current manner of request. If anything, historians, think tank analysts, and diplomats will tell you it is further proof of why South Korea shouldn’t get involved further, because it ISN’T being offered a tangible payment package for doing so while North Korea is getting everything it wants from Russia while avoiding expanded combat troop commitment. The Korean War was notoriously transactional, which is why the international UN coalition worked at all in the Korean War but rarely in most modern wars: because each nation got what they wanted.
And finally, we have Ukraine’s very poor diplomacy with South Korea. In 2022, the official Ukranian twitter/x.com account took down a post about how fascism and nazism were defeated in 1945, and uploaded an edited version that removed japan’s involvement in the Axis powers after Japanese protests, along with an apology to the Japanese people. The whitewashing of Japan’s imperial warcrimes and ivolvement with NAzis to pander to Japan really pissed off many Koreans. In 2023, a ukranian diplomat beat up a South korean bar employee who was trying to stop an argument, and even the Korean police sent to handle the situation. The diplomat refused to apologize, and attempted to seize the phones of Koreans (possible cover up). In 2024, the Ukranian ambassdor to Japan Sergiy Korsunsky was caught in multiple scandals visiting the Yasukuni shrine (contains right wing revisionist statements, enshrines class A war criminals), comparing South Korea to Russia, etc, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back when the Ukranian embassy in Japan made no comment or apology about this, while Ukraine ‘s official twitter account apologized to Japan for mentioning its involvement with fascism and nazism in WW2. Ukraine’s lack of diplomatic response or proper apology after these scandals CRUSHED domestic Korean support for Ukraine.
South Korea is a democracy, not a dictatorship. Politicians will not support sending significant aid to Ukraine after South korean public perception of relations of Ukraine plummeted after scandals like this, because that’s political suicide. It was already difficult enough becasuse South Korea is being asked to deplete its own funds and equipment to support a war it has no intrinsic stake in and getting little for it. Combine the domestic voter outrage and you have an impossible request. A 2024 Gallup Korea poll showed 82% opposed sending military aid to Ukraine (66% says only humanitarian aid + 16% opposing any aid), 5% undecided, and only 13% in favor of sending military aid of any kind.
I’m posting this because recently we had quite a few users come into this subreddit to complain about South Korea’s lack of interest in participating in the Russo-Ukraine war, like user u/byjegeren who decided to out of the blue suddenly post a unrelated article about Trump solely to criticize South Korea’s current stance with Ukraine, basically saying he doesn’t understand why South Korea doesn’t help out Ukraine like North Korea is helping out Russia.
TLDR Summary: South Korea isn’t sending more aid because the math doesn’t add up economically, geopolitically, militarily, in terms of public sentiment, and in commensuration compared to North Korea’s massive benefits package. The math literally doesn’t add up, while North Korea is being offered by Russia everything it wants.
Free free to check the links and sources I provided.
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