SEOUL – When reports surfaced late last year that South Korea had agreed to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish his supplies it insisted that its “end user” should be the US military. But internally, senior advisers to President Yoon Suk Yeol were worried their American ally would divert them to Ukraine.
Mr. Yoon’s secretary of foreign affairs, Yi Mun-hui, told his boss, National Security Advisor Kim Sung-han, that the government was “locked in worries that the US would not be the end user if South Korea adhered to a.” US request for ammunition,” reads a series of classified Pentagon documents leaked via social media.
The classified report was based on signals intelligence, meaning the United States was spying on one of its key allies in Asia.
Both Mr. Yi and Mr. Kim resigned last month for unclear reasons. Neither man could be reached for comment.
Aware of the news of the leaked documents, South Korea planned to discuss “issues raised” by the leak with Washington, a senior government official in Seoul told reporters on Sunday. Asked whether South Korea plans to protest or demand an explanation from Washington, he said the government will investigate past precedents and similar cases involving other nations.
Although US officials have confirmed that the trove of leaked documents are legitimate intelligence and operational records compiled by the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, at least one had at some point been modified from the original. And the apparent authenticity of the documents is no indication of their accuracy.
The documents regarding South Korea showed a key American ally torn between Washington’s pressure on Seoul to help ship ammunition to Ukraine and its official policy of not supplying deadly weapons to warring countries. Seoul feared President Biden would call Mr. Yoon directly to take matters forward.
Yi stressed that South Korea is unwilling to hold a talk between heads of state without having a clear position on the issue, adding that South Korea cannot violate its policy against delivering lethal aid, prompting an official change policy would be the only option,” the document said.
Mr. Yi said that Mr. Yoon’s Secretary of National Defense, Im Ki-hun, promised to finalize “a final stance by March 2.”
But her boss, Mr. Kim, was concerned that if the announcement of Mr. Yoon’s state visit to Washington coincided with an announcement that South Korea was changing its stance on providing lethal aid to Ukraine, “the public would think that the both would have settled a deal.” Mr. Yoon’s state visit to Washington, scheduled for April 26, was announced on March 7.
Instead, according to the document, Mr Kim “suggested the possibility” of selling 330,000 rounds of 155mm artillery shells to Poland because “quick delivery of the ammunition to Ukraine was the ultimate goal of the United States”.
Mr Yi agreed that it might be possible for Poland to be labeled as an end user and send the ammunition on to Ukraine, but that South Korea would “need to check what Poland would do”. Exactly what he meant by that is unclear, because South Korea’s export control rules stipulate that weapons or weapon parts sold abroad may not be resold or transferred to a third country without Seoul’s consent.
The senior South Korean official on Sunday declined to give details of what he called “internal discussions” within Mr Yoon’s government. But he added that “nothing is finalized” and that there is still “no change” in Seoul’s policy towards Ukraine. South Korea has shipped humanitarian aid to Ukraine but insisted it would not supply deadly weapons directly.
“South Korea’s position was that it will cooperate with the United States without clashing with Russia,” said Yang Uk, a weapons expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “The leaked documents put South Korea in a more difficult position.”
And the mere fact that the spying is taking place, apart from what it might uncover, is a damaging revelation, he said.
“It’s reasonable to suspect that the United States is spying on senior defense and security officials in Seoul, but it’s bad news for the general public ahead of the South Korea-US summit,” he added. “People will ask, ‘We’ve been allies for seven decades, and you’re still spying on us?'”
