The recently leaked Pentagon documents revealed that highly-placed South Korean officials were torn on whether to send weapons to Ukraine. The document also goes on to suggest that the US has been spying on South Korea, its decades-old ally.
The timing of the leak was termed in the BBC report as “unfortunate” citing that it comes a fortnight before President Yoon Sook-yeol’s visit to the White House to celebrate 70 years of the alliance between the two countries. The US will have to prove that the alliance is iron-clad.
The South Korean government brushed off the findings and said these were “absurd and false” and added that it was impossible to intercept private conversations inside the presidential office. They also ruled out the possibility that these discussions took place in its private underground bunker.
Defence chiefs of both nations said the documents may have been distorted as Washington scrambles to trace the source of the leaks.
The leaks have become a cause for concern and embarrassment for American officials. The Pentagon has said the leaks are a threat to US’ national security.
The BBC in its report pointed out that Seoul was torn over whether to sell ammunition which could be used by Ukraine.
On one hand South Korea understood that the US wanted to replenish its stocks as it had been arming Ukraine since the onset of the war, on the other hand it was torn over the decision because it has a policy of not supplying weapons to countries at war.
Washington has pushed Seoul to arm Kyiv but the Korean government has resisted citing its policy. Seoul last year agreed to sell artillery shells to the US, to replenish its stocks depleted by the Ukraine war.
Seoul insisted that the shells be kept with the US and not diverted to Kyiv and the leaks revealed that Seoul worried that the US may ultimately pass the shells to Kyiv.
The leak sheds light on a conversation held between two of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s senior national security advisors last month.
South Korea also worried that if South Korea changed its policy, it would look like it acted under Washington’s pressure.
They also worried that President Biden could call President Yoon directly about the issue, and that if South Korea were to change its policy on providing weapons to Ukraine, it could look as if it had been pressured by the US.
The leaks revealed that South Korea’s national security advisor Kim suggested that shells could be sold to Poland if the ultimate goal was to send the shells to Ukraine.
The US is aware that South Korea can build advanced weapons at a breakneck speed and impact the outcome of the war but South Korea is concerned that if it takes such steps it could burn bridges with Russia.
The South Korean opposition has slammed the government and questioned how the US was able to intercept such a high-level conversation and said Washington violated Seoul’s sovereignty and outlined that it was a “super-scale security breach”.
“This is the tip of the iceberg. There is no way in hell this is it,” Kim Jong-dae, an advisor for the former liberal government, was quoted as saying by the BBC.
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