Battle ready Seoul slow to act as Ukraine war gives Pyongyang crucial skills

When North Korea fired ballistic missiles from its eastern coast in May, South Korea's response was swift.

- Raphael Rashid Seoul Luke Harding Kyiv

When North Korea fired ballistic missiles from its eastern coast in May, South Korea's response was swift. Within hours, Seoul joined Washington and Tokyo in condemning the launch as a "serious threat" to regional peace and security.

But weeks earlier, when a North Korean KN-23 missile, designed to hit South Korean targets, killed 12 civilians in Kyiv, Seoul said nothing. There was also no response when Russia reportedly deployed a surface-to-air missile system to protect Pyongyang, nor when Ukraine revealed Russia was training North Korean drone pilots on home soil, even as Kim Jong-un voiced "unconditional support" for Moscow's war.

Relations between the North and South, technically still at war, remain tense, and the muted response has raised questions from analysts over whether Seoul fully grasps the consequences of what many see as North Korea's most significant military transformation in decades - one shaped in real warfare, on Ukraine's battlefields.

"We should be alarmed," said Chun In-bum, a former South Korean special forces commander. "But it's just the nature of people to avoid catastrophe or be indifferent to the terrors of reality."