Posted on Dec 7, 2023
What North Korea's shift toward Russia means for its global strategy
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https://www.npr.org/2023/12/07/ [login to see] /north-korea-russia-china-us-foreign-policy
South Korea's spy agency told lawmakers last month that North Korea was able to put its first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit, after two failed attempts, with technical help from Russia.
That is hardly surprising, as Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that his country was willing to help North Korea with its satellites, when leader Kim Jong Un visited the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's far east in September.
But that's not the whole picture. South Korea's military also believes that North Korea may have sent over a million artillery shells and other munitions to Russia for use in Ukraine.
South Korea's spy agency told lawmakers last month that North Korea was able to put its first military reconnaissance satellite into orbit, after two failed attempts, with technical help from Russia.
That is hardly surprising, as Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that his country was willing to help North Korea with its satellites, when leader Kim Jong Un visited the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's far east in September.
But that's not the whole picture. South Korea's military also believes that North Korea may have sent over a million artillery shells and other munitions to Russia for use in Ukraine.
What North Korea's shift toward Russia means for its global strategy
Posted from npr.org
Russia
North Korea
Ukraine
Technology
Posted 5 mo ago
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."International events helped Pyongyang's foreign policy shift
Seen from another angle, international events have helped catalyze North Korea's strategic shift.
"The war between Russia and Ukraine and the intensifying competition between the U.S. and China opened up the possibilities for cooperation with China and Russia," says Park Hyeong-jung, a researcher emeritus at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a South Korean government think tank.
"So this is, for North Korea, a kind of coincidental salvation," Park says.
North Korea needed to shift to a new strategy because its previous one — of trying to bargain away part of its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for sanctions relief and normalized ties with the U.S. — fell apart.
To think it could succeed in the first place was a failure of Kim's strategic judgment, Park says. Then again, Kim saw a rare alignment of positive factors and tried to capitalize on it.
"North Korea comes out to the negotiating table only when the frame of negotiations is favorable to them," Park says, "and the Moon-Trump-Kim era was just that." (Moon Jae-in, who favored engagement with Pyongyang, was South Korea's president at the time).
Following an initial summit with then-President Donald Trump in Singapore in 2018, Kim "really thought he could make progress with the Americans," says Robert Carlin, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and former State Department official.
But when Trump walked out of a 2019 summit in Vietnam, after rejecting Kim's offer of partial denuclearization in exchange for lifting sanctions, it "was an enormous blow to Kim," says Carlin, "both personally and as a symbol of his office, and the aura of his leadership."...
..."International events helped Pyongyang's foreign policy shift
Seen from another angle, international events have helped catalyze North Korea's strategic shift.
"The war between Russia and Ukraine and the intensifying competition between the U.S. and China opened up the possibilities for cooperation with China and Russia," says Park Hyeong-jung, a researcher emeritus at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a South Korean government think tank.
"So this is, for North Korea, a kind of coincidental salvation," Park says.
North Korea needed to shift to a new strategy because its previous one — of trying to bargain away part of its nuclear and missile programs in exchange for sanctions relief and normalized ties with the U.S. — fell apart.
To think it could succeed in the first place was a failure of Kim's strategic judgment, Park says. Then again, Kim saw a rare alignment of positive factors and tried to capitalize on it.
"North Korea comes out to the negotiating table only when the frame of negotiations is favorable to them," Park says, "and the Moon-Trump-Kim era was just that." (Moon Jae-in, who favored engagement with Pyongyang, was South Korea's president at the time).
Following an initial summit with then-President Donald Trump in Singapore in 2018, Kim "really thought he could make progress with the Americans," says Robert Carlin, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and former State Department official.
But when Trump walked out of a 2019 summit in Vietnam, after rejecting Kim's offer of partial denuclearization in exchange for lifting sanctions, it "was an enormous blow to Kim," says Carlin, "both personally and as a symbol of his office, and the aura of his leadership."...
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I recall when Ike brought our troops home in 1953. My dad said we should have finished the job because eventually we will have to. Took 70 years to prove him right.
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