South Korea, US warn against North Korea-Russia military ties ahead of Putin visit

5 months ago 17

Senior officials of South Korea and the United States held an emergency phone call over a possible impending visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to North Korea, Seoul’s foreign ministry said on Friday (14 June).

South Korea’s vice foreign minister, Kim Hong-kyun, in the phone call with US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, said that Putin’s visit should not result in deeper military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, the ministry said.

Echoing Kim’s concerns, Campbell pledged continued cooperation to tackle potential regional instability and challenges caused by the trip.

“While closely monitoring related developments, the two sides agreed to resolutely respond through airtight cooperation to North Korea’s provocations against South Korea and actions that escalate tensions in the region,” the ministry said in a statement.

On Wednesday, a senior official at Seoul’s presidential office said Putin was expected to visit North Korea “in the coming days”. Russia’s Vedomosti newspaper on Monday reported Putin would visit North Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks.

Civilian aircraft have been cleared from Pyongyang’s airport and there are signs of preparations for a possible parade in the capital’s Kim Il Sung Square, NK PRO, a Seoul-based website, reported this week, citing commercial satellite imagery.

When Sergei Shoigu, then Russia’s defence minister, visited Pyongyang last year to jumpstart the two countries’ warming ties, he accompanied Kim to a parade and saluted as North Korea’s banned nuclear-tipped missiles rolled by.

Speaking at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington on Wednesday, Campbell said the United States has a very good understanding of what North Korea has provided Russia, which he said has had “a substantial impact on the battlefield”.

Less clear, he said, is what Russia has provided North Korea.

“Hard currency? Is it energy? Is it capabilities that allow them to advance their nuclear or missile products? We don’t know. But we’re concerned by that and watching carefully,” he said.

Common communist roots

Communist North Korea was formed in the early days of the Cold War with the backing of the Soviet Union. North Korea later battled the South and its US and United Nations allies to a stalemate in the 1950-1953 Korean War with extensive aid from China and the Soviet Union.

North Korea was heavily reliant on Soviet aid for decades, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s contributed to a famine in the North.

Pyongyang’s leaders have often tried to use Beijing and Moscow to balance each other. Kim, who came to power in 2011, initially had a relatively cool relationship with Russia and China, which both joined the United States in imposing strict sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear tests.

Russia has since joined China in opposing new sanctions on North Korea, blocking a US-led push and publicly splitting the UN Security Council on the issue for the first time since it started punishing Pyongyang in 2006.

Ukraine war boosted relations

North Korea has reciprocated with public support for Moscow after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It was one of the only countries to recognise the independence of Russian-claimed Ukrainian regions, and it expressed support for Russia’s annexation of parts of Ukraine.

The US and others have accused North Korea of transferring weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine.

The debris from a missile that landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on 2 January was from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile launched from Russian territory, UN sanctions monitors told a Security Council committee in a report seen by Reuters.

UN experts say North Korea missile landed in Ukraine's Kharkiv

The debris from a missile that landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on 2 January was from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile, United Nations sanctions monitors told a Security Council committee in a report seen by Reuters on Monday (29 April).

Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the accusations, but vowed last year to deepen military relations.

Shoigu told Russian media last year that Moscow was discussing holding joint military exercises with North Korea.

“Why not, these are our neighbours. There’s an old Russian saying: you don’t choose your neighbours and it’s better to live with your neighbours in peace and harmony,” Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

Economic ties

In 2022 Russia and North Korea restarted train travel for the first time since railway journeys were cut during the COVID pandemic. The train carried an unusually opulent cargo: 30 thoroughbred horses.

Shortly after that, Russia resumed oil exports to North Korea, UN data shows, the first such shipments reported since 2020.

The vast majority of North Korea’s trade goes through China, but Russia is a potentially important partner as well, particularly for oil, experts said. Moscow has denied breaking UN sanctions on oil exports to Pyongyang, but Russian tankers have been accused of helping evade caps on exporting oil to North Korea.

Russian officials have openly discussed “working on political arrangements” to employ 20,000 to 50,000 North Korean labourers, despite UN Security Council resolutions that ban such arrangements.

Russian officials and leaders in occupied regions of Ukraine have also discussed the possibility of having North Korean workers help rebuild war-torn areas.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)