South Korea and Russia’s Nuclear Security Needs: Implications of the Russian-South Korea Strategic Strategic Partnership on the Security and Economic Development of the Cold War
Their upcoming meeting, the second in nine months, is a sign of the two countries’ deepening political and military partnership built over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Putin discovered the value of having a well-armed neighbor. Russia is in need of much-needed military equipment for the war in Ukranian. The Russian Far East was sited of a meeting between Kim Jong Un and Putin.
The United States and South Korea suspect North Korea has also been providing Russia with large quantities of artillery shells and other munitions for use against Ukraine, a claim that North Korea has denied.
South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said in a recent interview that North Korea could have shipped as many as 5 million shells and dozens of ballistic missiles to Russia.
Pyongyang was never known for altruism: Russia is paying for military supplies with fuel and food. Kim is interested in Russia’s space technologies. In his embrace of Kim, Putin may well oblige.
He pledges the two countries will develop alternative trade and mutual settlement mechanisms not controlled by the west while building an equal and indivisible security architecture.
A comprehensive strategic partnership treaty is a treaty the leaders could sign, said Ushakov.
Russia and South Korea expanded their economic ties. Seoul became a major investor in Russia’s economy, and trade between the two countries surged to over $28 billion by 2014.
Jenny Town is the director of the Korea Program at the Stimson Center and she says they would not be willing to announce it if the two countries agreed to a higher level of military cooperation.
Not only are many of North Korean’s military activities under sanctions, but also the country is self reliant and avoids being dependent on other countries.
“Russia is willing to be bold, is trying to upend the system,” she says, “whereas China is still trying to be part of that system and trying to have some governance role in that system.”
China held high-level talks with South Korea on Tuesday, just hours before Putin’s expected arrival in Pyongyang. Over four years had passed since the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea held a trilateral summit.
“China still talks about denuclearization whereas the Russians seem to have generally accepted North Korea as a country that’s nuclear armed,” adds Town.
With an intensifying arms race and eroding international norms, Town says bringing North Korea back to denuclearization negotiations will be much harder for the U.S. and its allies.
The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power: The History of the Cold War Between the United States and the Soviet Union
He is the distinguished professor at the Henry A. Kissinger center for global affairs. He is based at SAIS-Europe, in Bologna, Italy. His new book, To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, was published by Cambridge University Press in May.
The Soviet relationship with North Korea never quite returned to what it was under Stalin. Pyongyang leaned to China’s side in the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s, and although Kim later quarreled with the Chinese (few know that the two dictatorships fought a brief border skirmish in 1969), he never drifted to the Soviet camp, preferring a posture of fierce independence.
It didn’t work out. The North Korean invasion of the South or, as Putin now conveniently calls it, Pyongyang’s “patriotic war of liberation,” triggered U.S. involvement and ultimately China’s intervention, too. The Chinese succeeded in pushing the United Nations and U.S. troops back to the 38th parallel. Although the countries are technically still at war, the fighting ended in 1953.
The purge of the Workers Party of Korea was launched by Kim when he suspected their pro-Russian leanings. Kim got away with his purge and used a form of self-reliance called juche. It was not self-reliant in terms of the economy. China and the USSR continued to provide economic and military aid to the North Koreans.
The Soviets eyed their sometimes-ally with frustration and annoyance, worried as they were that Kim’s militant outbursts (such as the North Korean capture of USS Pueblo in 1968 and the shootdown of the American reconnaissance plane EC-121 in 1969) would implicate the Soviet Union. Only the hard-line Stalinists shed tears when the relationship broke in the late 1980s. The rest of Russia looked to South Korea.
The invasion of Ukraine by Russia changed the game on the Korean peninsula. South Korea joined U.S.-led sanctions against Russia, causing a plunge in bilateral trade. The President of South Korea visited Kyiv in July to show his support for the President of Ukraine.
More than three decades ago, Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam accused her of abandoning North Korea in a way that resembled a pair of worn-out shoes. Putin put the shoes back on, after taking them out of the garbage bin. He likes the look.