Very few countries are siding with Russia in the Ukraine war. One of these states is North Korea. Russia’s President Putin now wants to expand the relationship between the two countries – with advantages for both sides.
North Korea is one of the most isolated countries in the world. No freedom of information, no freedom of the press and closed borders, reinforced by the corona pandemic.
Russia is also more isolated internationally due to its war in Ukraine. Sanctions restrict the country’s citizens, flights to many countries are no longer possible. And freedom of information and freedom of expression has also been more restricted since the beginning of the war.
In their common isolation, the two heavily sanctioned states now want to work more closely together. Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong Un want to expand relations between their countries. In a message to Kim on the day of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule (1910 to 1945), Putin wrote that both sides share a tradition of bilateral friendship and cooperation North Korean state media on Monday.
North Korea recognizes Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states
Putin was quoted as saying it was in the interest of the people of both countries to develop relations. It would also help “bolster security and stability in the Korean Peninsula and throughout the Northeast Asian region.”
The warm words are likely to be a reward for North Korea, which pledged its political support for Putin’s course after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In July, for example, the leadership in Pyongyang, after Russia and Syria, also recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which had broken away from Kyiv, as independent states. As a result, Ukraine severed diplomatic relations with North Korea.
According to reports from North Korea, Kim also sent a greeting to Putin. In the letter, Kim expressed his belief that friendly relations “are getting stronger in all areas.” The basis for this are agreements that both countries reached at their summit in April 2019 in the Russian city of Vladivostok.
North Korean workers for eastern Ukraine?
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was one of North Korea’s closest partners, especially in business. The relationship deteriorated with the fall of the Iron Curtain, but improved again as Russia increasingly turned away from the West.
Both countries are likely to benefit from closer cooperation in a number of areas.
In July, Russia’s ambassador to North Korea suggested that North Korea could send construction workers to eastern Ukraine to help with reconstruction. “Highly qualified, hardworking and ready to work in the most difficult conditions, the Korean construction workers will be an asset in the serious task of restoring social, infrastructural and industrial facilities (in the Donbass) destroyed by the retreating Ukronazis,” Ambassador Alexander Matsegora told the pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia, according to the news site “The Moscow Times” quoted. Matsegora echoes the Kremlin’s false claim that Ukraine is ruled by Nazis.
According to Matsegora, North Korea and the two separatist republics have “broad prospects for bilateral cooperation” and both sides are expected to develop beneficial trade ties, according to the Moscow Times.
Foreign exchange and new technology for North Korea
But North Korea could also benefit. Pyongyang is particularly keen to modernize its Soviet-era manufacturing facilities, which were originally manufactured at factories in eastern Ukraine, Ambassador Matseroga said. According to Matsegora, North Korea will also supply its new partners with magnesite clinker in exchange for supplies of coking coal and wheat. In North Korea, the supply of food and energy sources is inadequate.
North Korea has been sending workers abroad for several years to earn foreign currency for the financially strapped state coffers. Under UN sanctions, the North Koreans were due to be repatriated by the end of 2019, but a significant number of North Korean workers have reportedly continued to work in Russia and China, as well as Laos and Vietnam after the deadline, according to the British newspaper “The Guardians” reported. According to a report by the US broadcaster CNN from 2018 there were around 50,000 North Korean workers in Russia who earned around $500 million in foreign exchange for Pyongyang.
The communist country has since confirmed, according to a report by “NK News”, a news portal in South Korea specializing in North Korea, that it wants to send workers to the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Donetsk People’s Republic, North Korea plans to send workers to Russian-occupied Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, writes “NK News”. The leader of the breakaway region has also expressed interest in meeting Kim Jong Un.
North Korea wants to work with Donetsk on many levels
North Korea’s Ambassador to Russia Sin Hong Chol discussed Pyongyang’s plans during a meeting with Donetsk People’s Republic Ambassador to Russia Olga Makeeva in late July, according to NK News. His comments marked the first public endorsement of previous proposals by Russia’s top diplomat in Pyongyang.
There is “great potential in the trade and economic direction and in the area of labor migration,” Sin reportedly said during the meeting, but only “after the opening of the DPRK’s borders and the lifting of the Covid restrictions.” According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the two sides discussed cooperation “in all sectors of the national economy,” including “industry, agriculture, construction, trade, health care, education, culture and others.”
According to information from the South Korean news site “Daily NK” workers have already been selected by North Korean authorities to be posted to the pro-Russian Donbass region. A source in Russia told Daily NK on July 25 that “North Korean authorities have instructed companies operating in Russia to prepare to send workers to the war zone.”
However, the North Korean authorities have not yet ordered the workers to move to the Donbass region, according to Daily NK.
North Korean troops for Russia?
Russian state media have also reported in the past that North Korea has offered to send 100,000 troops to the war zone to fight Ukraine. That reported “Business Insiders” and NK News.
North Korea offered the Kremlin 100,000 “voluntary” troops to help Russia win the war against Ukraine. “There are reports that 100,000 North Korean volunteers are ready to come and take part in the conflict,” Russian military expert Igor Korotchenko told Channel 1 of Russian state television. “If North Korea expresses a desire to fulfill its international duty to fight Ukrainian fascism, we should allow it.”
But even the Russian Foreign Ministry denied these reports. “This news is fake from start to finish, such negotiations are not ongoing,” it said on Twitter.
Experts see the rapprochement of the two isolated states as a way for the Kremlin to circumvent sanctions – and how isolated Putin is.
“Russia has no reason to adhere to any restrictions”
“That only shows the extent to which Putin remains isolated. Now he has to turn to North Korea,” quoted the US state foreign broadcaster Voice of America John Kirby, White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications.
Sergey Radchenko, a Cold War historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told Voice of America, “Now that Russia is itself under sanctions, it obviously has no reason to adhere to any restrictions.” According to the fellow with a focus on East Asia at the Brookings Institution in Washington, both countries see “clear parallels in their respective situations”.
In her opinion, it is “very likely that we will see a deepening of diplomatic, economic and maybe even military relations between North Korea and Russia in the coming months”.
Sources: DPA and KCNA news agencies, BBCThe Moscow Times, Business Insider, Daily NK, NK News, Voice of America, CNN, The Guardian