South Korea does not rule out supplying arms directly to Ukraine, President Yoon Suk-yeol said, after North Korea deployed troops to support Russia in its war.

Pyongyang’s involvement in the conflict has posed a threat to Seoul as the isolated state’s soldiers gain much-needed combat experience that its military lacks and are also rewarded by Moscow with sensitive transfers of military technology, Yoon said in -a press conference on Thursday.

South Korea, a major arms exporter, has a longstanding policy of not supplying weapons to countries in conflict.

“Now, depending on the level of North Korean engagement, we will gradually adjust our support strategy in phases,” Yoon said.

“This means that we do not rule out the possibility of providing weapons.”

Yoon said he discussed North Korea with US President-elect Donald Trump in a phone conversation that set the stage for a face-to-face meeting in the “near future”.

North Korea has become one of the most vocal and prominent supporters of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

South Korea and the West have long accused Pyongyang of supplying artillery shells and missiles to Moscow for use in Ukraine.

But intelligence reports from Seoul, Washington and NATO revealed that North Korea has deployed 10,000 troops to Russia, indicating an even deeper involvement in the conflict.

Yoon said his office would monitor developments related to North Korean soldiers’ operations, and if they decided to supply weapons to Ukraine, the initial batch would be defensive.

“If we are going to continue with arms support, we would prioritize defensive arms as the first consideration,” he said, without elaborating.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov told South Korean broadcaster KBS that the Ukrainian army had its first confrontation with North Korean soldiers.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who criticized the West’s lack of response to the arrival of North Korean soldiers on the front line, said these “first skirmishes with North Korea open a new chapter of instability in the world”.

South Korea supplies weapons to Poland, including rocket launchers, tanks and FA-50 fighter jets.

At a defense exhibition in Seoul in October 2023, Yoon said he wanted his country to become “the world’s fourth-largest exporter of defense equipment.”

Compared to his smooth-talking predecessor, Moon Jae-in, Yoon has taken a tough stance on the nuclear-armed North while improving ties with security ally Washington.

Since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s second summit with then-President Trump collapsed in Hanoi in 2019, Pyongyang has abandoned diplomacy, doubling down on weapons development and rejecting Washington’s offers for negotiations.

During his tenure, Trump met with Kim three times, starting with a landmark summit in Singapore in June 2018, although the pair failed to make much progress on the North’s denuclearization efforts.

Earlier, Trump accused South Korea of ​​getting a “free wipe” on US military power and demanded that it pay much more of the cost of keeping US troops in the country to counter the threat of aggression from North Korea.

On Monday, a day before the US election, South Korea and the US signed a five-year plan under which Seoul agreed to an 8.3% increase in its contribution from 2026 to the cost of maintaining US bases in country at 1.52 trillion won ($1.09). billion), with future increases capped at 5%.

Yoon said Thursday: “We will build a perfect security posture together with the new administration in Washington and protect our freedom and peace.”

On Wednesday, the Russian Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, ratified a mutual defense pact with North Korea. The treaty was signed in Pyongyang on June 19 during a state visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The unanimous upper house vote formalizes months of increased security cooperation between the two nations, the most since they were communist allies during the Cold War.