This September marks eighty years since the end of World War II and the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Army by the Soviet Union and the liberation of Northeastern China and the northern part of the Korean Peninsula from Japanese occupation.
It was decided to divide Korea into North and South back in July 1945 at the Potsdam Conference, namely, to send Allied troops to Korea for three years. By so doing, the country was divided into two parts almost in the middle along the 38th parallel. The Southern part was placed under the control of the United States, while the Northern part remained under the control of the Soviet Army. However, as soon as the Soviet and American troops, having served a three-year term, started their withdrawal from the Peninsula, on August 15, 1948, South Korea was formed in the south, and on September 9 of the same year – the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) was created in the north.
At that, the leader of the “Southerners” Lee Seung-man, more known in the Western countries as Syngman Rhee, backed by Washington, said that his regime was the only legitimate government in the whole country. For his part, the leader of the “Northerners”, former Soviet Army captain Kim Il Sung, retaliated in kind. That said, he was supported by Moscow and Beijing, because no one wanted to lose Korea, an important transport crossroads in the Far East, a springboard for control of the sea lanes. All the above resulted in a bloody three-year war, in which the great powers were drawn. North Korean supporters, Chinese “volunteers” and Soviet military pilots, fought against the Americans who supported Lee Seung-man. The ratio of our aviation victories over the losses of our former American allies was 7 to 1. The war claimed the lives of over three million Koreans, and many cities and towns were razed to the ground. The armistice was signed in the summer of 1953, introducing the concept of a 241-kilometer-long “demilitarized zone” that still divides the two Korean states.
Since then, Russian-North Korean relations have had ups and downs related to Russia’s stance on Pyongyang’s quest to gain access to nuclear weapons. On the one hand, Moscow understood the position of the DPRK, which seeks to ensure the security of the state from the threat of an armed attack by a stronger enemy of the United States, and on the other hand, it did not accept it, since it would destroy the established world order based on the authority of the United Nations and the non–proliferation of nuclear weapons. At that time, Moscow tried to adhere to established international rules and publicly condemned North Korea’s nuclear weapons tests and missile launches on the Korean peninsula.
However, since the beginning of 2010, the world has been moving in search of a new model of the world order, a gradual transformation of the old approaches to ensuring global security. The confrontation between the “collective West” led by the United States and the “global South” has intensified. The United Nations and other international organizations began to lose their influence in the world, in particular, they exhausted their opportunities to remain an impartial arbitrator and began to lean more and more towards a system of justifying double standards in their practice.
In such a situation, many elements of the traditional global security structure began to lose their importance, and the existing mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of disputed issues began to lose traction. The unified political, economic and information space is giving way to military-political blocs, which, due to competition in the Russia-China-USA triangle, inevitably began to affect the Far East and the Korean Peninsula.
That said, the emerging “Asian NATO” consisting of Japan, South Korea and the United States seeks to justify its existence by an alliance between Moscow and Pyongyang, or Pyongyang and Beijing. At the same time, North Korea drew special attention to the provocative statement by former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol that the liberation of Korea will be fully realized only after the elimination of the DPRK, which must take place with the help of the international community.
The changed situation in the international political arena after the return of Crimea to the Russian Federation, and especially after the start of a Special Military Operation in Ukraine in 2022, contributed to the transformation of the position of Russia and China in the UN Security Council, where they began actively blocking attempts by the United States, as well as France and the UK, to further increase sanctions pressure on Pyongyang, and then Moscow’s veto paralyzed the action of an official group of experts that formally monitored the sanctions regime and its violations, but in fact turned into another instrument of pressure and labeling.
In this context, Russia’s withdrawal from the sanctions regime seems logical now, but this is fraught with a serious crisis in the UN Security Council when a permanent member of the Security Council, who previously voted for sanctions, openly violates the relevant resolution. That is why, at this stage, Moscow’s position boils down to the fact that it is against the introduction of new sanctions, but intends to comply with the old resolutions and act on the principle of “everything which is not forbidden is allowed.”
Therefore, speaking about the further expansion of mutually beneficial cooperation between the two neighboring countries, it is necessary to develop a “roadmap” of ways that would not violate existing sanctions or, at best, exploit “gray schemes”, allowing avoiding direct accusations.
The exchange of visits between Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of North Korea Kim Jong-un to the Primorsky Territory of the Russian Federation and Russian President Vladimir Putin to North Korea in 2023 and 2024, and their results demonstrated the mutual interest of the parties in reviving bilateral cooperation, which could develop in the following areas:
further development of existing areas of cooperation in the trade and economic field, Moscow can significantly increase agricultural exports (agrochemicals, fertilizers, diesel fuel for tractors and combines), the intensification of which is already visible from the increased contacts between the two countries;
- further development of existing areas of cooperation in the trade and economic field, Moscow can significantly increase agricultural exports (agrochemicals, fertilizers, diesel fuel for tractors and combines), the intensification of which is already visible from the increased contacts between the two countries;
- development of transport and communications infrastructure: we can expect not only the construction of a cross-border automobile bridge and the intensification of the existing regular passenger railway service Moscow-Pyongyang and freight from Hassan (Khasan) to the Korean port of Rajin, but also the entrance of Russian cellular communications into the DPRK and the connection of certain segments of the DPRK to the Russian Internet;
- There are prospects for cooperation in technologies, in particular, North Korean satellites could be launched on Russian rocket carriers, and Russian computing power can calculate the processes through which nuclear tests will be dictated only by political, not technical necessity;
- there are wide development opportunities in tourism, education, healthcare and sports that are not subject to sanctions.;
- a very promising direction is to attract Korean labor for the construction of economic facilities in Russia, which are formally under sanctions, but at the same time are not a direct disregard for the UN resolution. The desire to import North Korean labor is primarily due to their good reputation due to the combination of price, quality, non-criminality and relative obscurity not only in the Far East.
The highest achievement in the development of strategic relations between Russia and the DPRK was the conclusion in June 2024 in Pyongyang and the subsequent ratification of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement between Russia and the DPRK, which provides for the development of strategic partnership in various fields: industry, economy, transport, science, and the provision of military assistance by all available means in the case if one of the sides finds itself in a state of war.
In accordance with article 5 of this treaty, the Korean side, at the request of Moscow, immediately sent 1,500 Special Forces troops in October 2024 to assist the Russian Armed Forces in the fight against the invading Ukrainian aggressors in Russia’s Kursk region. In April of this year, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, Gerasimov, admitted that North Korean troops had provided “significant assistance” to the Russian army in expelling the occupiers.
Recently it became known that Pyongyang plans to send a thousand sappers to de-mine the territory of the liberated Russia’s Kursk region and then about five thousand soldiers of the construction division to rebuild war-affected towns and villages in the Russian region.
It seems that the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine has also become useful for the Korean army, as it has provided an opportunity to test weapons and personnel, as well as gain valuable knowledge about modern warfare.
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