South Korea’s Yoon tells UN that Russia helping North Korea would be ‘direct provocation’
- The president said Seoul and its allies would not stand idly by if Moscow helped Pyongyang enhance its weapons programmes in return for help in the Ukraine war
- Yoon made the comments just as Kim Jong-un returned from a trip to Russia, where he and Putin vowed to boost military cooperation
Yoon made the comments just as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un returned to Pyongyang from a week-long trip to Russia in which he and Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to boost military cooperation.
North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes were not only an existential threat to South Korea, but a serious challenge to peace in the Indo-Pacific region and across the globe, Yoon said.
“It is paradoxical that a permanent member of the UN Security Council, entrusted as the ultimate guardian of world peace, would wage war by invading another sovereign nation and receive arms and ammunition from a regime that blatantly violates UN Security Council resolutions,” he said.
Seoul and Washington have expressed concern that Russia could be trying to acquire ammunition from North Korea to supplement stockpiles thinning as a result of its war in Ukraine, while Pyongyang seeks technological help for its nuclear and missile programmes.