Worry over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s rumored plans to travel to Russia this fortnight has been raised by the US and its supporters.
An arms agreement between North Korea and Russia appears to make great contextual sense.
For the conflict in Ukraine, Pyongyang has an abundance of both weapons and artillery shells, which Moscow urgently needs.
On the other hand, North Korea, which is sanction-starved, is in desperate need of food and money. Border closures for more than three decades, not to mention the dissolution of negotiations with the US in 2019, have made the nation more desolate than previously.
But beneath the surface, it makes it possible for Pyongyang and Moscow to begin collaborating more carefully. A leader-level conference between Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin has propelled the US’s notice about a potential arms agreement between the two nations into the next sphere.
While it appears that the US’s top priority in the short term is to prevent North Korean munitions from reaching the front lines in Ukraine, the worry in Seoul is what North Korea may receive in exchange for selling its weapons to Russia.
Mr. Kim will be able to remove a high price from Russia given its precarious situation.
He might be able to ask Russia for more defense assistance. Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister of Russia, had suggested that the US, South Korea, and Japan keep joint naval drills, which Kim Jong Un but abhors. This was revealed yesterday by the South Korean intelligence service.
In the future, Mr. Kim might also be able to request Russian arms.
But, Seoul officials believe that cooperation on this stage is unlikely because it might prove to be carefully risky for Russia.
Yet if Russia doesn’t buy North Korea arms in exchange, Yang Uk, a research fellow at the Asian Institute for Policy Studies, said it could also bank its nuclear program. The North Korean economy can be revived if Russia pays in fuel and food, which in turn may develop North Korea’s weapons system. They now have a second source of income that they previously did not.
” For 15 years, we’ve built up a system of sanctions against North Korea, to stop it from developing and trading weapons of mass destruction ,” Mr. Yang, an expert in military method and weapons systems, added. Russia, a continuous member of the UN Security Council, now has the potential to topple the entire program.
As restrictions have increased, North Korea has grown more reliant on China to ignore those who break the law and to give it food aid. Beijing has been able to build its nuclear arsenal without significant repercussions for the past month by refusing to condemn North Korea for its weapons testing at the UN Security Council.
Beijing benefits from having a valuable buffer zone between itself and the US troops stationed in South Korea thanks to North Korea.
Pyongyang, however, has never felt comfortable relying solely on China. It gives Mr. Kim the opportunity to extend his support system as Russia searches for friends.
Additionally, given how desperate Russia is, the North Korean leader might believe he can negotiate Moscow for even greater compromises than Beijing. In the face of a North Korean nuclear test, Mr. Putin may agree to remain silent, but this might be too much for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
According to Dr. Bernard Loo of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore,” North Korea was playing the Russians off the Chinese during the Cold War, very similar to how kids play families off each another.”
However, the outcome of the meeting is also up for debate.
Mr. Kim rarely or infrequently departs from North Korea. He fears for his safety and believes that traveling overseas is dangerous. He traveled by armored station on his final global journeys, to Hanoi to join Donald Trump in February 2019 and to Vladivostok, where he met Mr. Putin in April 2019. Two exhausting days were spent traveling through China to Hanoi.
Uncertain of how personal the two leaders intended their meeting to become, it’s possible that the US is hoping that by making it public, Mr. Kim will become alarmed and the possible arms deal will be thwarted.
But, Dr. Loo doesn’t believe Mr. Kim would have much leeway:” Given the information about three-way military activities, it would be difficult to cancel these kinds of events without all ending up with chicken on their experience.”
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the US has released knowledge as part of its strategy to try to thwart transactions. Russia and North Korea have so far refuted all claims that they are interested in trading weapons. Both are unlikely to want this transaction to be made people.
Nicholas Yong in Singapore provided extra coverage.
