SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea will provide more demining equipment to Ukraine, a South Korean official said on Sunday, following President Yoon Suk Yeol’s visit to Kyiv on the weekend where he pledged more military and humanitarian aid in the fight against Russia.
“We are thinking to expand support on mine detectors and demining equipment as Ukraine’s demand for them was assessed to be desperately huge,” Yoon’s deputy national security adviser, Kim Tae-hyo, told a briefing.
Yoon made the pledge for more aid in talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday in a surprise visit to Kyiv after attending a NATO summit in Lithuania and visiting Poland, where he expressed solidarity with Ukraine.
South Korea is a U.S. ally and major arms exporter but it has been resisting Western pressure to help arm Ukraine directly, citing business ties with Russia and Moscow’s influence over North Korea.
In a press conference after the meeting on Saturday, Yoon has said South Korea will provide “a larger scale of military supplies” to Ukraine this year, following last year’s provision of non-lethal supplies such as body armour and helmets.
(Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi; Editing by Michael Perry)
