On Saturday, July 15, after a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, South Korean President Jun Suk-yol announced that Seoul will expand humanitarian and military aid to Kyiv.
On Saturday, July 15, after a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, South Korean President Jun Suk-yol announced that Seoul will expand humanitarian and military aid to Kyiv.
We will “expand the scale of supplies compared to last year when we provided materials such as helmets and body armor,” Yun told a press conference.
He added that the amount of humanitarian aid will be increased to 150 million USD this year from 100 million last year.
Although South Korea is the ninth largest arms dealer in the world, it has so far limited itself to providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine. However, Seoul has sold tanks and howitzers to Kyiv’s closest ally, Poland.
Seoul has long maintained a policy of not supplying weapons to countries engaged in active hostilities and has so far refused to bow to pressure from the United States and European countries to change this position in the case of Ukraine.
“Ukraine now reminds me of South Korea in the past,” Yun said, noting that it was only thanks to international aid that the South Koreans were able to achieve a “miraculous victory” over the communists in the North and later become one of the world’s largest economies.
According to reports, before the meeting with Zelensky, Jun visited Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, where Russian invaders committed mass murders of civilians last year, and Irpin, where the Russians subjected residential blocks to rocket fire. The South Korean president then laid a wreath at the War Memorial.
