South Korea told Ukraine it was ready to accept North Korean soldiers captured by Kyiv if they were willing to move to the country, state news agency Yonhap reported.
In a phone call, foreign minister Cho Tae Yul told his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha the prisoners would be considered South Korean citizens and Seoul would accept their defection if they expressed such an intention.
Ukraine estimates that North Korea deployed nearly 11,000 soldiers to aid Russia’s war effort, marking the first time that the isolated country has put boots on the ground in a foreign conflict.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said his forces had killed or wounded about 4,000 North Korean soldiers in Kursk, the Russian border region which Ukrainian forces entered last August in their only significant counterattack into Russian territory. Kyiv has since lost most of the territory it held there.
Moscow and Pyongyang have denied that North Korean troops are fighting in the Ukraine war even after signing a mutual defence last November that obligates each to come to the other’s aid in the event of an external attack.
In January, Mr Zelensky said his forces had captured two wounded North Korean soldiers from the Kursk battlefield.
He shared a video showing one of the soldiers expressing a desire to stay in Ukraine.
One of the soldiers reportedly told South Korea’s Chosun newspaper that he was willing to defect to the country and asked if he would be accepted for asylum.
The talks between the foreign ministers of South Korea and Ukraine came amid concerns about the fate of North Korean soldiers captured by Ukraine.
"If the soldiers are captured and tell information to the enemy, their families will be punished, go to a political prison camp, or worse, they will be executed in front of the people," North Korean defector Pak Yusung told ABC News.
