November 27, 2025
SEOUL – 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, just south of Seoul — 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, listed purported benefits of enlistment, including high pay, provision of equipment, a choice of battalion, eligibility for Ukrainian citizenship, combat experience and “the legal right to kill North Korean residents.” It also displayed a phone number and an email address that belong 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.
Ukrainian authorities said the images first emerged on anonymous Russian Telegram channels before spreading online.