In early December, rumours resurfaced in the Russian tabloid press and “patriotic” Telegram channels about South Korean special forces fighting in Ukraine or South Korean mercenaries being recruited en masse on ROK territory.
A Recap of the Previous Episode
Last time, the “special forces” turned out to be a 40-year-old man named Lee Geun. The former Navy SEAL, who has turned into a YouTuber, arrived in Ukraine as a volunteer in March 2022 and returned home three months later with a knee injury sustained in combat. Later on, after a lengthy legal process in June 2023, he was sentenced to one and a half years on probation for illegally entering Ukraine in violation of the government’s travel ban to the country. As a result of another case, he was fined 5 million won ($4,000) for online insult and defamation.
The baton was then taken up by a certain Kim Mo, who gave an interview to SBS News on February 23, 2023, presenting himself as the “commander of the International Brigade of Ukraine’s Internal Defense Forces.” The 33-year-old Kim claimed to have worked for nine years at the Special Warfare Command and the National Intelligence Service before entering Ukraine at the end of October 2022 to “reimburse the aid South Korea received in the past.” After that, both he and the brigade he supposedly led vanished from the news.
Furthermore, during this particular period, several ethnic Koreans, but US citizens succumbed to the Special Military Operation, and ROK justice was prosecuting its citizens for illegal travel.
It is believed that currently, between 15 and 20 South Koreans have fought in Ukraine, with seven of them killed. A few are reportedly still fighting.
The 2025 Funeral
On November 27, 2025, Seoul for the first time confirmed the death of a Korean citizen who fought on the Ukrainian side against Russian troops. Previously, information about deceased South Korean citizens had appeared only through Russian sources. Now, the ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs has officially confirmed one case.
Reportedly, on November 25, a farewell ceremony was held in Kyiv for a South Korean national surnamed Kim, born in 1969, who died on May 17, fighting in the Donetsk region. The ceremony was attended by an employee of the ROK embassy. The Ukrainian side had notified Seoul in advance about the date and circumstances of the funeral. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is providing his family with all necessary consular assistance to repatriate the body.
The Strange Posters
On November 20, 2025, a freelance journalist from the Philippines happened on a poster attached to a streetlamp in the city of Seongnam and uploaded it to the online platform Medium (Medium @alancallowjournal). The poster, captioned “Join the Ukrainian Army!”, listed in Korean purported benefits of joining up, including high salary, equipment provision, choice of battalion, eligibility for Ukrainian citizenship, combat experience, and the “legal right to kill North Koreans.” There were the phone number and email address of the Ukrainian Embassy in the ROK on it.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly distanced itself from the images, calling them part of the Russian disinformation campaign. As it was stated by the ministry spokesman Georgy Tykhyi, “We officially refute this latest Russian hoax. Neither the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine nor the Embassy of Ukraine in the Republic of Korea has distributed such leaflets.” At the same time, according to embassy staff, people who read the poster and expressed their willingness to fight for Ukraine were calling and messaging them. “We have received calls from ordinary Koreans (requesting enlistment into military service), and the calls proceed… We simply inform them that it is beyond the embassy’s functions.”
A statement from the Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communication and Information, known as “Справдi” (“Indeed”) (the very same organisation that once presented Laotian military personnel as DPRK fighters and unearthed the North Korean trace far beyond Russia’s Kursk region), also stated that “Russia is now conducting a disinformation campaign to convince the audience that Ukraine is recruiting South Koreans into its armed forces. This is nonsense.” Moreover, the images first appeared in anonymous Russian Telegram channels before spreading online.
According to Russian-speaking Ukrainian OSINT specialists, the only person who saw the posters was the aforementioned Filipino blogger. Due to his low profile and network of reposts, he was considered a Russian virtual persona or an alias of a Russian student studying in the ROK, who allegedly created the poster himself, attached it in a low-traffic area, and then photographed it. However, the quality and professionalism of the poster’s production do not tally with a “lone amateur” style; furthermore, a single poster in a remote location would be unlikely to prompt multiple calls to the embassy.
Summing Up
It appears that the alarmist news stems from either mistranslation or from the “they hear a bell but do not know where it comes from” approach, as the Russian saying goes. The funeral for the slain mercenary took place in Ukraine, not South Korea, and the number of ROK citizens fighting there is still reduced to single digits, as official Seoul continues to ban travel to the region.
The story with the posters, or rather, with one single poster, is more complicated. The author is inclined to believe not so much in Russian provocations as in grassroots activism within a certain diaspora, whose certain representatives are connected to the ruling party and organise “anti-war rallies.” However, references to a supposed “legal right to kill citizens of the DPRK” could only come from those who forget that, from South Korea’s formal point of view, the DPRK does not exist, and all its citizens are considered citizens of the ROK living in “occupied territory.” Therefore, this initiative hardly comes from official Seoul.
Yes, ROK military spending has been growing, and the West’s strategy of arming Ukraine with South Korean weaponry includes, among other things, pressing Russia out of this market; relations between Seoul and Moscow remain “frozen” despite the efforts of Russia’s numerous friends. But the red lines have not yet been crossed, and isolated pieces of evidence do not equate to trends approved from above.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Centre for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences
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