SEOUL, South Korea — Cho Seng-won has entered uncharted territory.
Not only is he the first CEO of a South Korean defense startup to conduct product testing on the Ukrainian battlefield, he is also the first one to come under attack from Russian, or possibly North Korean, sources in the hybrid domain.
“Whenever this kind of thing happens … well, I was a field artillery officer in the South Korean Army, so it was like a current op: I was trying to be as calm as possible,” said Mr. Cho, who founded artificial intelligence defense startup Newtype Industries in 2025. “It is something I could have expected … a high spectrum of hybrid war is prevailing in Europe, and I felt it was my turn.”
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While drones and shells fly in Ukraine, in Seoul, the attack on Mr. Cho’s venture was a psyop launched via media.
On Nov. 5, Mr. Cho was astonished to read that Ukraine had ceased frontline testing of his product, an AI-enabled app that accelerates artillery fire orders through the kill chain.
The product was being withdrawn due to a diplomatic spat between Seoul and Kyiv, the article asserted.
The source was The Diplomat — a respected online magazine that provides pundits, academics and other essayists a platform to analyze the issues of the day, primarily in Asia-Pacific.
Mr. Cho was doubly astonished to see that he was quoted in the piece, even though he had had no contact with the alleged journalist who wrote and submitted the piece.
The Diplomat’s apparent scoop was swiftly picked up by other defense-related media, mainly in Ukraine and Russia.
Mr. Cho, working in concert with other global firms supporting Ukraine, reached out to The Diplomat. The magazine conducted a probe and retracted its article.
“The author presented themselves as a South Korean freelance journalist and claimed to have interviewed Newtype’s CEO,” The Diplomat stated on its website, post-retraction. “We now know that the journalist fabricated the interview and may not even be who they claimed to be.”
Mr. Cho is pretty sure where the attack originated.
“We speculate that this was an enemy who wants us not to develop a relationship with Ukraine,” he said. “So it could be Russia, it could be North Korea, or it could be a branch inside South Korea, but I suspect that it came from outside Korea.”
The Diplomat reached a similar conclusion.
“Additional scrutiny of the exchange between the journalist and The Diplomat revealed evidence that the emails originated in Russia, suggesting this article was part of a disinformation operation,” it wrote, adding an apology to Newtype.
Russia has generated major assets to prosecute what it calls “nepriskosnovennaya” or “nekontaktanya voyna” — “noncontact warfare” or “non-linear warfare.”
These assets are deployed in the information domain.
A major case came to light last month. On Oct. 12, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham revealed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 Brexit referendum, which led to Britain withdrawing from the European Union.
Russia is not the only authoritarian actor using online disinformation bots to sow internal political dissension.
In a widely reported finding, cybersecurity firm Cyabra discovered that hundreds of supposedly pro-Scottish independence social media accounts suddenly went dark after airstrikes hit Iran’s data infrastructure in June.
While the move against Mr. Cho was not nearly as strategic as the operations prosecuted against London, given the recent state of Kyiv-Seoul relations, the faux story that ran in The Diplomat looked credible.
A surprise diplomatic bomb exploded in September, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy revealed that two North Korean special operatives, captured by his troops while fighting alongside Russian forces in Kursk Oblast, had been handed over to Seoul.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung was livid, saying that Mr. Zelenskyy had breached agreed-upon confidentiality protocols. He subsequently escalated, withdrawing Seoul’s ambassador to Kyiv.
That brouhaha coincided with the appointment of a pro-Russia lawmaker to Mr. Lee’s brain trust as an adviser on “peace and diplomacy,” and suspicions voiced in media that the two sought Moscow’s help to initiate a diplomatic opening between Seoul and Pyongyang.
And it followed the exploratory transit made by a South Korean container ship to Britain and Europe in August via the “Northern Sea Route” — along Russia’s northern littoral.
Seoul’s apparent lean toward the Kremlin alarmed some.
Two separate sources in Seoul told this newspaper that European nations were aghast.
Both separately suggested that future weapons sales to countries such as Poland — the biggest arms buyer from South Korea since the Ukraine war started — as well as customers like Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and Romania, could be impacted.
Mr. Cho’s startup is venturing where South Korea’s major arms manufacturers have not. Due to vague foreign trade restrictions on arms sales to belligerents, the big corporates have supplied NATO, but not Ukraine.
Mr. Cho declined to state whether or not he required permission from Seoul to offer his product to Ukraine.
Newtype’s product, “Barbara” — named for the patron saint of gunners — eases calls for fire.
When a soldier at the front spots targets and contacts an artillery fire-control center via smartphone, Barbara’s onboard AI immediately converts voice into a digital targeting report, accelerating response time.
The report also includes fail-safes, such as flagging civilians in the target area.
The Washington Times understands that the app has been in use with selected Ukrainian units since early this year.
Newtype’s representative partner in the Ukrainian market says usage continues.
“We can confirm that activities are ongoing,” wrote Celine LaCour, principal strategist at Reaktion Group, in an email.
Reaktion Group was founded in Canada after the Russian invasion in 2022 and facilitates the stress-testing of international firms’ products in Ukraine.
A retired artillery major, Mr. Cho has professional reasons for his Ukrainian outreach.
“This is all about getting real data,” he said. “Korean startups and even huge companies are trying to be big in defense AI, but they are all dreaming about it without testing it on the battlefield.”
That was also the case when he served.
“Even in my military career, I was very sick and tired of doing things without any reality,” he said. “So as soon as I started this company, I thought Ukraine was the place to start.”
Given current geopolitics, he fears that South Korea’s prior ability to sit out global conflicts, while instead prioritizing commercial relations, is coming to an end.
“We Koreans thought we could get out of the mess of geopolitical events abroad — for example, we had handshakes with Iran, good relations — and we could do that in the past because we were weak,” he mused. “But now, the rest of the world are forcing us to choose; not to do anything is the selfish choice.”
Meanwhile, Kyiv-Seoul relations may be thawing.
Ukrainian media United24 reported on Tuesday that South Korea’s National Assembly has pledged $100 million in aid — albeit nonlethal — to Kyiv in its 2027 budget.
And on Wednesday, the foreign ministers of both countries met on the sidelines of the Paris G7 meeting. Reports indicated amicable discussions.
Mr. Cho would be pleased to see relations improve.
“Ukraine is on the front line of free nations,” he said. “For me, it is an honor to protect another free nation.”
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