By Kang Hyun-kyung
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s decision to send Choe Ryong-hae as a special envoy to Russia next week confirms that Pyongyang-Moscow relations are warming in the face of tightened international sanctions.
The two countries have been isolated since they turned a deaf ear to mounting calls to play by the rules.
Russia has faced bilateral and multilateral sanctions from the West after it annexed Crimea and supported rebels in eastern Ukraine. Despite multilayered international sanctions, North Korea has shown no signs of giving up its nuclear ambitions. Rather, its nuclear program has become more sophisticated year by year.
Experts say the deepening international isolation of the two countries seems to be the main reason for their improving relationship.
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow of the Sejong Institute, agrees with the popular belief that Choe’s scheduled visit to Moscow will ultimately lead to a North Korea-Russia summit.
“Russia would have felt relieved when the North approached and courted” its Cold War ally, the North Korea watcher said.
Cheong observed the warming Pyongyang-Moscow relationship could be a by-product of Seoul-Bejing ties, which have reached a high point since President Park Geun-hye took office in February 2013.
Cheong said it was little wonder that North Korea’s elite harbored hard feelings toward China, the Stalinist country’s only supporter, because their relations were in stark contrast with what was happening between South Korea and China.
“The leaders of South Korea and China have met five times for summits since President Park Geun-hye took office in February 2013,” he said. “But there was no summit between China and North Korea during the period.”
Quoting a Chinese think tank expert he met on his latest trip to China, Cheong said China’s stance on a summit with North Korea was clear. “I was told that there will be no China-North Korea summit unless the North takes measures to denuclearize,” he said. “That’s what I heard from the Chinese expert that I met.”
He said coverage of China had almost disappeared from North Korea’s state-controlled newspaper Rodong Sinmun, but there had been a gradual increase of Russian news.
Cheong said his recent visit to the northeastern part of China — which borders North Korea — provided evidence that North Korea and Russia had become closer.
“I saw a train, which had 40 cars, near the Tumen River on the line connecting Russia and North Korea,” he said. “I took this to mean that the two sides are trying to make things happen because a 40-car train is not insignificant.”
Chung Eun-sook, a Russia expert at the Sejong Institute, said President Vladimir Putin had pushed for a strong Russia policy since he took power, and was striving to regain influence on the Korean Peninsula by bolstering ties with North Korea.
She said this was behind Russia’s push for a railway project and gas pipeline connecting the two Koreas and Russia.
Chung disagreed with the common view that South Korea had nothing to lose even though Russia and North Korea became closer. Some people have even said that Russia could even have a role in improving inter-Korean relations.
Chung said this view was “naive and dangerous.”
“Will it make sense for South Korea to strengthen a partnership with a country like Russia, which is under sanctions from the international community, to get help for North Korea? I don’t think so,” she said.