Russia and North Korea: what can they do for each other?
Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un at a Russian cosmodrome in September last year. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/AFP/Getty Images
China accounts for more than 90% of North Korea’s trade and has been its most dependable aid donor and diplomatic ally. But as Vladimir Putin’s imminent visit to Pyongyang proves, the secluded state’s behaviour is being increasingly influenced by its security and economic ties with Russia.
How does Russia help North Korea?
China is not the only regional power to have allegedly helped North Korea skirt UN sanctions and prevent its economy from collapsing. Last month, the US claimed Russia had been shipping refined petroleum to North Korea in quantities that reportedly exceed the limit imposed by the UN security council. John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesperson, said the proximity of the two countries’ commercial ports meant the provision of oil could continue indefinitely. Border closures introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic dramatically reduced North Korea’s ability to trade and inflicted further damage on its fragile economy. Kim is believed to have secured supplies of food, as well as energy, from Russia, to address shortages, and is expected to do the same when he meets Putin this week. In 2022, Russia and North Korea restarted train travel for the first time since railway journeys were cut after the emergence of Covid. Among the cargo on the first journey were 30 thoroughbred horses.
What can North Korea offer Russia?
North Korea is one of the most impoverished societies on Earth, but it has one commodity that has facilitated the burgeoning friendship between Putin and Kim Jong-un: military hardware. When they met in Vladivostok nine months ago, the leaders reportedly agreed to a deal that would see Russia share technological knowhow to assist North Korea’s space programme in return for munitions and weapons for use in Ukraine. While the Kremlin has described reports of an arms deal as “absurd” there is evidence that North Korean ballistic missiles have been used in Ukraine. South Korea’s defence minister, Shin Won-sik, said in an interview with Bloomberg News that Seoul had identified at least 10,000 shipping containers sent from the North to Russia that are believed to hold artillery ammunition and other weapons.
Weapons aside, North Korea has a lucrative export industry in human resources: workers sent overseas to earn much-needed foreign currency for the regime. Russia is no exception. Russian officials have discussed “working on political arrangements” to employ 20,000 to 50,000 North Korean labourers, in defiance of a UN mandate requiring all its workers to be repatriated by the end of 2019. In 2022, Russia’s ambassador in Pyongyang, Alexander Matsegora, said North Koreans could also be deployed to rebuild the infrastructure in occupied regions of Ukraine.
Is Russia trying to stymie sanctions against North Korea?
In its role as a permanent member of the UN security council, Russia has made tightening sanctions against the North – and checking on those already in place – far more difficult. Along with China, it voted against additional measures in response to ballistic missile launches in 2022, and in March it vetoed the renewal of a UN panel of experts tasked with monitoring the implementation of security council sanctions. Despite political tensions among its five permanent member states, the security council once managed to maintain unanimity in frustrating Pyongyang’s ballistic missile and nuclear ambitions. That consensus has been shattered.
What has changed since Putin’s last visit?
When Putin last visited Pyongyang, in 2000, Russia was a member of the G8. North Korea, then ruled by Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, was still six years away from conducting its first nuclear test. The geopolitical climate has changed beyond recognition, driven by a more hardline Putin and a younger Kim determined to turn his county into a genuine nuclear power. Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, coupled with a record number of North Korean missile tests the same year, have deepened both countries’ international isolation. That, in turn, has driven Putin and Kim together in a mutually beneficial challenge to a “hostile” US and its allies in Europe and north-east Asia. It will culminate this week in economic and security agreements that, in Putin’s words, demonstrate that these “comrades-in-arms” are “ready to confront the ambition of the collective west”.