Pyongyang links with Moscow ‘may heighten threats’

Russian embrace of isolated neighbour could increase Kim’s risk appetite, US official warns

Russia’s “complete embrace” of North Korea could increase Kim Jong-un’s appetite for risk when it comes to threatening South Korea and exporting weapons abroad, as well as helping Pyongyang ignore Washington’s call to return to nuclear talks, a senior Biden administration official has said.

As North Korea shipped weapons to help power President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Pyongyang had benefited from the “whole gamut” of improved diplomatic ties with Russia, from economic and security assistance to high-profile visits by top Russian officials, the State Department’s senior official for North Korea Jung Pak said.

“This could lend this once-isolated country the lustre of legitimacy that it does not deserve, and it should not have,” Pak said. “We’re concerned about what that might do to make Kim think that his leash is longer than it really is, and how that might figure into Kim’s risk calculus.”

North Korea had so far shipped around 11,000 containers of munitions to Russia as well as 40 ballistic missiles used in Ukraine, Pak said. That has bolstered Putin’s forces after they got bogged down when their initial advance failed to take Kyiv, and as Moscow’s defence industrial base was eroded by a wave of Western sanctions aimed at damaging Russia’s economy.

South Korean Defence Minister Shin Wonsik said Seoul estimated the containers could hold about 3 million rounds of 152mm artillery shells used by the Kremlin in its bombardment of Ukraine. This has bolstered Putin’s arms stocks while Kyiv’s ammunition supplies have dwindled as military aid has been held up in the United States Congress.

Russia in return was providing North Korea with food, raw materials and parts used in weapons manufacturing, Shin said. The food aid had helped Kim stabilise prices for necessities and the military aid could raise Pyongyang’s threat to the region, he said.

The value of the artillery alone is possibly several billion US dollars, and the aid from Russia could represent the biggest boost to North Korea’s economy since Kim took power. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the arms transfer accusations despite a multitude of satellite photos released by research groups and the US government showing the flow of weapons from North Korea to Russia and then to munitions dumps near the border with Ukraine.

One way North Korea had benefited diplomatically from its ties with Moscow had been Russia’s veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution to extend a panel of experts that had reported on North Korea’s development of nuclear arsenal for 15 years, Pak said.

There was now a real risk the high-profile nature of North Korea’s relationship with Russia could make its armaments more appealing to other groups around the world, Pak said. South Korea already said North Korean weapons had been used by Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group, against Israel as the war in Gaza dragged on.

“The lustre of legitimacy could give other bad actors ideas about North Korea’s weapon systems,” she said. “And North Korea has had a long history of proliferation in the Middle East, Africa, elsewhere. And we don’t want that to start blossoming into other proliferation relationships. So this is not just a Northeast Asia problem.”

Kim has shown off some of his newest weapons systems by displaying tests on state media. North Korea’s propaganda apparatus yesterday lauded its latest test overseen by Kim a day earlier of a simultaneous launch of shortrange ballistic missiles in what it billed as its quick counter-attack capability in a “nuclear trigger” system.

While North Korea had flouted Western sanctions and efforts to halt Russia’s war machine, Chinese firms had also been crucial to re-establishing the Kremlin’s defence industrial base with dual-use technologies and other components, the US said.

Chinese companies and banks have also been accused of facilitating payments to North Korean entities, with that money funding Kim’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken planned to bring up North Korea’s provocations when he would visit China in the coming days, department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

While Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, on a recent trip to China, threatened Chinese financial institutions that aided Russia’s war with sanctions, it is not clear whether the US would take similar actions when it comes to Chinese banks that are involved with North Korea.