Photos of posters urging South Koreans to enlist in the Ukrainian military have circulated online, prompting Kyiv to dismiss them as a “Russian hoax.”
The images — showing a poster attached to a streetlight in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province — were uploaded to the online publishing platform Medium on Nov. 20 by a freelance journalist based in the Philippines.
The poster, headlined “Join the Ukrainian Army!” in large Korean letters, lists purported benefits of enlistment, including high pay, provision of equipment, choice of battalion, eligibility for Ukrainian citizenship, combat experience and “the legal right to kill North Koreans.” It also displayed a phone number and email address belonging to the Ukrainian Embassy in Seoul.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs quickly denied any involvement, calling the materials part of Russia's “disinformation campaign.”
“Russia is now running a disinformation campaign to convince audiences that Ukraine is recruiting South Koreans into their armed forces. This is nonsense,” the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communication and Information, known as Spravdi, said in a statement.
“We officially refute this next Russian hoax — neither the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry nor the Ukrainian Embassy in the Republic of Korea distributed such leaflets,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said separately, referring to South Korea's formal name.
The Ukrainian Embassy in Seoul told The Korea Herald it had nothing further to add beyond the Foreign Ministry’s statement, but confirmed that some South Koreans had contacted the mission after seeing the posters.
“We have received calls from regular Koreans (asking about enlistment) — and the calls are still coming in,” an embassy official said. “We just inform them this is not the embassy's area of work.”
Ukrainian authorities said the images first emerged on anonymous Russian Telegram channels before spreading online.
seungku99@heraldcorp.com
