When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un stepped off his armored train at a railway station in Khasan, eastern Russiafor his recent meeting with the president Vladimir Putin, I couldn’t help but think of the satirical film ‘The Death of Stalin’ (2017). The miniature bridge leading from the platform to the station and the faint red corridor that Kim walked along contrasted comically with the military regiment lined up to greet him. The scene was practically cartoonish, as if Mickey Mouse had put on a suit to talk about war with Donald Duck.
Of course, the artillery and weapons that Putin evidently wants from Kim are very real. So is Putin’s apparent sense that he doesn’t have many more international options.
In fact, the summit with Kim was presented as a kind of tactic and a slap in the face against Chinese President Xi Jinpingwho has worked for years to keep Kim in line and who had promised Putin a “unlimited partnership” a month before the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. And although Putin offered Kim a deep and multifaceted relationship at the summit, which he took advantage of to give him a guide around Russian military facilities and the Vostochny cosmodromethis raises doubts.
A limited relationship
During the late years of the Soviet Union and early post-Soviet period, the Kremlin’s stance toward North Korea was quite condescending. The Soviets needed to keep the closed communist country within their sphere of client states, to prevent it from turning towards the then hostile China, and were happy to use the cheap North Korean labor for industrial construction projects. But, as one researcher wrote in 1982, the bilateral relationship “was not as friendly or as close” as it seemed.
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That is still true today. Putin visited Pyongyang in 2000, and in 2012, after Kim succeeded his father, Russia canceled 90% of North Korea’s Soviet-era debt and pledged to invest in the impoverished country.
Investment has been limited and the Kim regime’s determination to development of nuclear weapons It has been a diplomatic obstacle. Russia’s demand for nonproliferation does not matter to Kim, who would rather face tough sanctions than abandon North Korea’s nuclear program.
Calculation change
Today, however, Putin’s calculations have changed. Russia is internationally isolated, a pariah state facing strict sanctions and issuing nuclear threats, just as the hermit kingdom of North Korea has done for decades. Furthermore, Putin is trying to group like-minded states into a kind of Warsaw Pact of the 21st century and North Korea – a staunch antagonist of the West – is a key candidate. The stage seems set for a true axis of marginalized people.
Although you don’t have to go so fast. Economically, North Korea still has little to offer Russia. Most of the products it sells on the world market – coal and other minerals, seafood and certain textiles – have no place in the Russian market, and the items Russia might want to import could not be produced in the quantities it needs. North Korea, for its part, cannot afford anything close to market prices for Russian goods.
Of course, the partnership announced at the Putin-Kim summit is not primarily economic. The objective is the military and technical cooperationas well as Russia’s purchase of North Korean weapons supplies.
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Antagonizing the West is one thing. Openly violating United Nations Security Council resolutions, which strictly prohibit such exchanges with North Korea, would further weaken Russia’s position in the United Nations. Furthermore, Russia knows that North Korea will not pay or reciprocate Russian military technology transfers. The unscrupulous Kim could even sell it to other states that threaten world peace.
None of this will please China, which, despite supporting the North Korean regime, has grown tired of Kim’s constant saber-rattling. And while Putin is keen to point out that Russia is also a major player in the region (Khasan is close to the border with China), he hardly wants to become an enemy of Xi.
The Russian military transfers to Kim regime Nor would they please South Korea, a country against which Putin has something of a vendetta.
And here lies probably Putin’s greatest motivation for meeting Kim. South Korea does not provide lethal aid to countries at war, such as Ukraine, as a matter of policy. But in recent months, the country has been delivering large amounts of artillery shells to the United States to “replenish (US) stockpiles,” and pledged to increase its delivery of non-lethal military supplies and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
By meeting with Kim, Putin appears to be warning Kim South Korea, the world’s ninth largest arms exporter, don’t go any further. The implicit threat is that if South Korea, which maintains generally good relations with Russia, bows to US pressure and begins supplying lethal aid to Ukraine, Russia will retaliate by transferring military technology to the North.
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North Korea has an asset to offer Russia: manpower. With a weakened ruble keeping away the Central Asian migrants, many menial jobs in Russian cities cannot be filled. Imported North Korean labor can fill this gap. For Russia, the main benefit of the Putin-Kim summit may be limited to a steady supply of cleaning and construction workers.
NINA L. KHRUSHCHEVA*
PROJECT SYNDICATE
* Professor of International Affairs at The New School, co-author (with Jeffrey Tayler) of ‘In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones’ (St. Martin’s Press, 2019).
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