10/22/2023 – 13:02
Washington accuses North Korea of supplying Russia with weapons for the war in Ukraine. Experts say their resentment toward the West will fuel cooperation for some time to come. South Korea joined the United States in condemning North Korea after Washington alleged that Pyongyang had supplied Russia with ammunition and weapons for ongoing war in Ukraine.
Seoul is considering additional measures against Pyongyang, a senior Foreign Ministry official said.
Analysts suggest there are few options left to exert additional pressure on South Korea’s northern neighbor, which has managed to survive despite the weight of a series of crippling international sanctions imposed since Pyongyang’s regime carried out a first nuclear test in 2006.
They say that global geopolitics has changed dramatically since then and that Pyongyang now finds itself closely aligned with both Russia and China as they face off against the West.
And these alliances of convenience are allowing North Korea to circumvent many sanctions, improve its military capabilities and try to advance its own geopolitical ambitions in Northeast Asia.
South Korea condemns exchange rate
Referring to relations between Russia and North Korea, in a recently released statement, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said: “Any exchange of arms between the two is a clear violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and a threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
The comments came after US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Washington that North Korea had handed over 1,000 containers of military supplies to Russia.
According to the US government, containers were seen being placed aboard a North Korean ship in the port of Najin, North Korea, and then transported to the port of Dunay in the Russian Far East. From there, satellites tracked the shipment to an ammunition depot near the city of Tikhoretsk, about 290 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Similar images analyzed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, showed a sharp increase in rail traffic carrying containers across North Korea’s border with Russia.
Both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied that North Korea is sending weapons to Russia.
“Resentment of the West”
Although Russia benefits militarily and North Korea is expected to receive fuel, food and military technology in return, the two will have the opportunity to strengthen bilateral relations and “cause damage” to the West, in the assessment of Dan Pinkston, professor of international relations at Troy University in Seoul.
“Both countries have a deep sense of aversion against the West and a desire to overthrow the international order,” he says. “We can add other actors to this list – China and Iran, for example – whose grievances are not exactly the same, but who all harbor resentment toward the West.”
And while none of the nations forming this new “anti-democratic alliance” fully trust each other, he added, they will cooperate as long as it is in their interests to do so. In the case of Russia and North Korea, collaboration could last a long time. “These two countries want a security architecture that is very different from the current one,” she highlights.
Pinkston says Russian leader Vladimir Putin wants to destroy NATO and the European Union, while North Korea wants to dismantle the 1953 Korean War armistice agreement and possibly control the southern half of the Korean peninsula.
“These are transactional actors who act opportunistically as they have the opportunity to take advantage of the current global geopolitical situation,” explains Pinkston.
The danger is that even more sanctions against Pyongyang by the US or South Korea will do little to harm Kim’s regime, while Russia has already indicated that, armed with a veto in the UN Security Council, it will not tolerate additional pressure from the UN on North Korea.
North Korea-specific skills
It has even been suggested that North Korea, which has managed to deftly survive sanctions for so long – reportedly taking full advantage of hacking attacks to steal large amounts of cryptocurrencies, diplomatic bags to smuggle narcotics and illicitly obtained funds, as well as other maneuvers – could be willing to teach Russia some of the tricks it has developed in exchange for nuclear weapons and missile technology.
Park Jung-won, professor of international law at Dankook University, believes that North Korea will likely “continue to take provocative positions and make the best use of the favorable international situation for its own purposes.”
“It will not have gone unnoticed by Pyongyang that US policy is currently paralyzed,” says the expert. North Korea is also aware that Ukraine and the Middle East are capturing the world’s attention and that, with Russia as a friend on the UN Security Council, additional sanctions are likely to be limited in scope and impact.
“All of this is favorable to North Korea, and I believe they will continue to take advantage of this uncertainty until the US elections next year”, highlights Park.
“Only when we know who the next US president will be can things stabilize.”
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