In order to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from succeeding, South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol said on Friday that Seoul was reviewing its options with regard to providing deadly assistance to Kiev.
On the fifth day of a state visit to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the partnership between the United States and South Korea, Yoon delivered a lecture at Harvard University’s Kennedy School in which he said that the Russian invasion violated Ukrainians’ rights and international law.
According to simultaneous translations of his words, “We should prove that such attempts will never succeed, to block further attempts being made in the future.”
When asked whether South Korea may provide Ukraine deadly assistance, Yoon responded:
We will take the necessary steps to preserve international standards and legal obligations while constantly monitoring the situation on the ground in Ukraine.
We are carefully watching the situation at the moment and looking at our alternatives.
In response to concerns about Pyongyang’s expanding arsenal of missiles and bombs, Yoon met with U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday at the White House. The United States promised to provide South Korea with additional information about its nuclear strategy in the event of a confrontation with North Korea. The two also spoke on the state of affairs in Ukraine.
Yoon signaled a change in his attitude against arming Ukraine for the first time when he told Reuters in an interview last week before departing for the United States that Seoul would go beyond providing humanitarian and economic help to Ukraine if it is subjected to a significant civilian strike.
In response to a different query, Yoon denied that the Washington Declaration he and Biden signed indicated they were embracing North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and added that he opposed portraying the country’s holding of the weapons as a matter of disarmament.
“South Korea could have to have nuclear weapons if we accepted North Korea’s possession of them, which would result in a scenario of disarmament. We do not want to see this take place,” he declared.
Yoon said that Seoul was compelled by the Washington Declaration to maintain its adherence to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and refrain from acquiring its own nuclear arsenal.
Although Seoul had the technological means to do so and there were views in South Korean society that supported this, he claimed that this was a complicated political and economic equation.
If we chose to develop our weapons, we would have to abandon many of the principles we have been defending, he stated. “Those viewpoints that claim we require a nuclear arsenal do not take into account all of these factors.”