South Korea Summons Russian Ambassador as Tensions Rise with North Korea

South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the country’s new defense pact with North Korea on Friday, as border tensions continued to rise with vague threats and brief, seemingly accidental incursions by North Korean troops.

Earlier Friday, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued a vague threat of retaliation after South Korean activists flew balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border, and South Korea’s military said it had fired warning shots the previous day to repel North Korean soldiers who briefly crossed the rivals’ land border for the third time this month.

That came two days after Moscow and Pyongyang reached a pact vowing mutual defense assistance if either is attacked, and a day after Seoul responded by saying it would consider providing arms to Ukraine to fight Russia’s invasion.

South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong Kyun summoned Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev to protest the deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un and called for Moscow to immediately halt its alleged military cooperation with Pyongyang.

Kim, the South Korean diplomat, stressed that any cooperation that directly or indirectly helps the North build up its military capabilities would violate UN Security Council resolutions and pose a threat to the South’s security, and warned of consequences for Seoul’s relations with Moscow.

Zinoviev told Korean officials that any attempts to “threaten or blackmail” Russia were unacceptable and that his country's agreement with North Korea wasn't aimed at specific third countries, Russia's embassy wrote on its X account. The South Korean ministry said Zinoviev promised to convey Seoul's concerns to his superiors in Moscow.

Leafletting campaigns by South Korean civilian activists in recent weeks have prompted a resumption of Cold War-style psychological warfare along the inter-Korean border.

The South Korean civilian activists, led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak, said it sent 20 balloons carrying 300,000 propaganda leaflets, 5,000 USB sticks with South Korean pop songs and TV dramas, and 3,000 US dollar bills from the South Korean border town of Paju on Thursday night.

Pyongyang resents such material and fears it could demoralize front-line troops and residents and eventually weaken Kim Jong Un’s grip on power, analysts say.

In a statement carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo Jong, one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, called the activists “defector scum” and issued what appeared to be a threat of retaliation.

“When you do something you were clearly warned not to do, it’s only natural that you will find yourself dealing with something you didn’t have to,” she said, without specifying what the North would do.

After previous leafletting by South Korean activists, North Korea launched more than 1,000 balloons that dropped tons of trash in South Korea, smashing roof tiles and windows and causing other property damage. Kim Yo Jong previously hinted that balloons could become the North’s standard response to leafletting, saying that the North would respond by “scattering dozens of times more rubbish than is being scattered on us.”

In response, South Korea resumed anti-North Korea propaganda broadcasts with military loudspeakers installed at the border for the first time in years, to which Kim Yo Jong, in another state media statement, warned that Seoul was “creating a prelude to a very dangerous situation.”

Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest in years as Kim Jong Un accelerates his nuclear weapons and missile development and attempts to strengthen his regional footing by aligning with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a standoff against the US-led West.

South Korea, a growing arms exporter with a well-equipped military backed by the United States, says it is considering upping support for Ukraine in response. Seoul has already provided humanitarian aid and other support while joining US-led economic sanctions against Moscow. But it has not directly provided arms, citing a long-standing policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

Putin told reporters in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Thursday that supplying weapons to Ukraine would be “a very big mistake,” and said South Korea “shouldn’t worry” about the agreement if it isn’t planning aggression against Pyongyang.

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Minister Cho Tae-yul on Friday held separate phone calls with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa to discuss the new pact. The diplomats agreed that the agreement poses a serious threat to peace and stability in the region and vowed to strengthen trilateral coordination to deal with the challenges posed by the alignment between Moscow and Pyongyang, Cho’s ministry said in a statement.

North Korea is extremely sensitive to criticism of Kim’s authoritarian rule and efforts to reach its people with foreign news and other media.

In 2015, when South Korea restarted loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border, prompting South Korea to return fire, according to South Korean officials. No casualties were reported.

South Korea’s military said there are signs that North Korea was installing its own speakers at the border, although they weren’t yet working.

In the latest border incident, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said several North Korean soldiers engaged in unspecified construction work briefly crossed the military demarcation line that divides the two countries at around 11 a.m. Thursday.

The South Korean military broadcast a warning and fired warning shots, after which the North Korean soldiers retreated. The joint chiefs didn’t immediately release more details, including why it was releasing the information a day late.

South Korea’s military says believes recent border intrusions were not intentional, as the North Korean soldiers have not returned fire and retreated after the warning shots.

The South’s military has observed the North deploying large numbers of soldiers in frontline areas to build suspected anti-tank barriers, reinforce roads and plant mines in an apparent attempt to fortify their side of the border. Seoul believes the efforts are likely aimed at preventing North Korean civilians and soldiers from escaping to the South.

The United Nations and partners say more migrants and refugees in Africa are heading northward toward the Mediterranean and Europe, crossing perilous routes in the Sahara where criminal gangs subject them to enslavement, organ removal, rape, kidnapping for ransom and other abuses.
A report released Friday by the UN refugee and migration agencies and the Mixed Migration Center research group estimated that land routes in Africa are twice as deadly as the sea lanes across the Mediterranean — which is the deadliest maritime route for migrants in the world, The Associated Press said.
The report said new conflict and instability in countries including Mali, Burkina Faso and Sudan have been behind a rise in the number of journeys toward the Mediterranean. But Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Guinea were the top countries of origin of migrants.
It comes as many politicians in Europe and beyond, in an important election year, have fanned or drawn support from anti-immigrant sentiment. But conflict, economic strife, repression and the impact of climate change in many countries in the developing world has fanned the flow of migrants across borders nonetheless — at the risk of physical abuse and death.
“Refugees and migrants are increasingly traversing areas where insurgent groups, militias and other criminal actors operate, and where human trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, forced labor and sexual exploitation are rife,” according to a summary of the report, which follows up on a similar study four years ago.
The authors admit there are no comprehensive statistics on deaths on the land routes in Africa. But refugee agency UNHCR has cited a more-than-tripling of the number of refugees and asylum-seekers in Tunisia — a key transit country for migrants aiming to get to Europe — between 2020 and 2023.
The report aimed to spotlight the dangers of land routes that lead to the Mediterranean, which was crossed by over 72,000 migrants and refugees in the first half of this year, and where 785 people have died or gone missing over those six months, according to UNHCR figures.
UNHCR special envoy Vincent Cochetel, citing accounts from some migrants and refugees who survived, said some smugglers dump sick people off pickup trucks ferrying them across the desert, or don't go back to retrieve others who fall off.
"Everyone that has crossed the Sahara can tell you of people they know who died in the desert, whereas you interview people in Lampedusa: Not that many people will tell you about people they know who ... died at sea,” he said, alluding to an Italian island in the Mediterranean.
The UN's International Organization for Migration reported earlier this year that more than 3,100 people died on the Mediterranean crossing last year.
The authors of the report, which drew on testimonies from over 31,000 people, said international action has been inadequate and pointed to “huge gaps” in protection and help for people making the perilous journey.
“In total, 1,180 persons are known to have died while crossing the Sahara Desert for the period January 2020 to May 2024, but the number is believed to be much higher,” it said.
The risk of sexual violence, kidnapping and death was reported by higher percentages of migrants questioned for the report compared to the previous one in 2020, and Algeria, Libya and Ethiopia were considered by respondents as the most dangerous.
The teams have tallied hundreds of cases of organ removals — a practice that has happened for years, Cochetel said. Sometimes, migrants agree to such removals as a way to earn money.
“But most of the time, people are drugged and the organ is removed without their consent: They wake up, and a kidney is missing,” he said.
Libya has emerged as a primary transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. In March, authorities discovered a mass grave containing the bodies of at least 65 migrants in the deserts of western Libya.

South Korea Summons Russian Ambassador as Tensions Rise with North Korea