North Korea News Podcast by NK News - NK News Team: Deciphering North Korea’s new treaty with Russia

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

After arriving late, Russian leader Vladimir Putin kicked off his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang on Wednesday. In addition to much fanfare, including a parade and concert, the pair also took their ties to the next level by signing a Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, Article 4 of which vows […]

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participants have done for me. If you want to book, please just simply search on Google North Korea from a near distance tour. That's North Korea from a near distance tour. We should come up as the first result and you can book from there. Hello and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jaco's Wedsuit. And today we're doing a special and unusual mini roundtable in the wake of President Vladimir Putin's visit to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong-un. I'm currently on vacation overseas and I've just woken up. So there's minimal preparation gone into this podcast and I'm joined from the NK News Studio via Stream Yard by my colleagues Anton Sokolin and Colin Swirko. Anton and Colin, welcome on the show. So I missed a lot while I was asleep, but basically I do know that Vladimir Putin visited Pyongyang and had a meeting there with Kim Jong-un.

It's hard to miss that even while overseas. Let's start with Anton. Can you give us the basics? Why was Putin in Pyongyang? Well, definitely Putin gave us a lot to think about. It was a very interesting visit. Of course it came with a bit of a delay because Putin is very known for his tardiness. The event, the visit was very much anticipated and I think it was prepped well in advance. But the main takeaway is the actual result of the meeting, right? It's not just about Putin going somewhere. It's not a performer visit it's actually the it's the agreement that the two leaders signed in Pyongyang and this agreement practically elevates bilateral ties between North Korea and Russia to a new level to the I would even say to the level of a military alliance going into specifics one of the articles specifically stipulates that the What are the articles of the agreement you mean?

Of the agreement, yeah, that they signed and it was recently released. It stipulates that one of them has to step in for the other one in the case of an external attack. And that speaks volumes about their growing partnership, I would say. Yes, I've actually been sent the original text in the Korean version. I haven't had a chance to read it of the agreement, but there are a total of 17 at the moment, 21 counting all the clauses here, 23 clauses, quite a long agreement. Have you had a chance to look at all of it so far, Anton? Of course, we went through the entire agreement, at least the Korean part.

We are still awaiting the Russian version of it, but the key points that definitely stood out, at least for me, was the defense agreement and their plans to establish or deepen their military cooperation. And I would say there was a vague close relating to that Russia would refrain from actions that would somehow infringe on North Korea's sovereignty. And I suppose that vaguely refers to the sanctions evasion situation that Russia and North Korea got themselves into. Yeah, that one was talking about not entering into international agreements or documents that it was basically referencing, it was basically saying Russia cannot sign on to any new sanctions at the UN level or multilateral level against North Korea. And so it doesn't sound like it's retroactive, although Russia has already signaled it's retroactively stopping its enforcement of the sanctions that it signed on to

back in 2017 and before. And on the military article, which was Article 4, I think, it said, just to add to what Anton said, it requires some military assistance in the case that one country is invaded or attacked. So that the language is very careful not to say if they start a war. So but Russia considers the Ukraine the aggressor, even though Russia invaded Ukraine. And it also, while it requires the other side to give military assistance, it also uses some careful language like, and sorry, I don't have the document right in front of me, but it's like to the best of their ability or to their, as far as they can go. So it leaves some wiggle room. It's a very good point actually that Colin just raised. Indeed, even our experts that we talked to raised the same issue that, well,

there are certain limitations on how far Russia or North Korea are ready to go in their support of one another. And that's why probably they picked this very careful language, not to say that they're going to jump into the new conflict right away. But it does sound like the missiles being sent to Russia right now from North Korea, that's consistent with these articles. So it kind of creates this foundation for the activity that's already happening. Ah, okay. So even though it's signed this week, the current war on Ukraine is what grandfathered into that, that North Korea is now expected under the new alliance to do what it can to

help Russia? That's all guesswork at this point. We can draw a connection between the two, the military, the assistance that's already been going on since last year openly plus this new document but as far as them actually coming out and then explicitly using this document as the foundation to then admit all of the activity that's been going on we don't haven't seen that yet but you know it's been out even 24 hours so but i i will have to add that the russian public is already being prepared i I think, for this scenario, as Russian state media been consistently featuring this Russian political pundits, I would say,

who speculate on the need of either providing missile technology or whatever technology to North Korea to strike the US. And they also discussed the probability of dispatching North Korean soldiers to the, to Donbas. So, oh, wow, that'll be interesting to see if that happens. Hey, I'm interested to what extent is this clause, this Article 4 of the agreement similar to North Korea's already existing mutual defense treaty with China? Well, that will probably have to double check with the text. We definitely, I would definitely say that Article 4 does resemble this, a similar clause in the very old 1961 Soviet DPRK treaty that was the other sign like more than a half century ago.

And it practically repeats the same language verbatim but with a slight hint of like modern language let's say and that has been actually pointed out by one of our experts please check out our article on that. That was a 1961 treaty was it? 1961 yeah. Okay because it was also in 1961 that the Sino-North Korean Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance was signed. So those two both go back to the same period there. And I'm looking to see if I can find while I'm talking to the text of the mutual defense

clause. I haven't been able to find that part yet. Well, that's probably another task that we'll have to explore. Yeah. And do Russia and China have any kind of a similar agreement between themselves? As far as I know, China and Russia limit themselves to economic cooperation without formally announcing or proclaiming their military alliance. Of course, they call themselves sometimes, well, at least the Russian side,

let's say the Russian politicians sometimes do resort to this rhetoric calling the other partner their ally, but de facto or at least the Jura, they do not have any legal agreement that would say that they are strategic or military, at least military allies. It'll be interesting to see if the three countries and maybe some other ones, maybe Iran, maybe Syria, if they going forward try to portray this as a solid and legally justified block to counter the so-called unipolar world. I mean, is this the kind of period that we're entering into? This is great that you actually brought this up, because if we take a look at Putin's recent speech, it was like a week ago, where he attended the Russian foreign ministry before going to North Korea.

And one of his, so at that point, at that time, he rolled out his peace proposal for Ukraine, right? Demanding the territorial gains, demanding withdrawal of Ukrainian forces. demanding the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces. But one other thing that he also mentioned was that he put forward this proposal of creating a Eurasia-wide security framework, something like a super extended NATO. It was quite vague, but that's what he was referring to. And he suggested that all the countries that would be willing to join it could join it. And it really does feel like North Korea is just the starting point of that. But of course, it's a speculation.

I don't know. Wow, gosh, that is fascinating. I did see already yesterday that one American expert called this the greatest threat to American security since the Korean War. Did you both see that? I saw that, but... That was Victor Child that said that, previous podcast guest. It sounded a little bit hyperbolic to me.

What's your take on it, Colin? Well, you only have to look as far as US foreign policy to judge whether or not. Well, if that's true, then the US is not in a good place because they do not prioritize the North Korea problem, but they certainly prioritize the Russia problem. So I don't know, it's not a good thing. And I think some experts, including Victor Chow, are saying that this is kind of a moment that the US has to pay attention to, to maybe pivot their foreign policy to take it more seriously and actually come out with a new strategy for North Korea, which the Biden administration has sort of adopted the strategic patients sort of view, right? So we'll have to see. It's very, it's too early. And I think all of

the reactions are still kind of coming out slowly and no indication yet of some kind of emergency meetings by various allies to address it. But we might see that in the next week. Okay, what's the reaction in South Korea so far? How is the government of President Yoon responding to this? I think that's also too early because last I saw our colleague Jungmin said that there was supposed to be a national security meeting. Yoon was supposed to convene a national security meeting today, but I do not know the results of that yet. Right, wow, there's so many things are in play right now. Now I'm interested also in looking a little bit at the the optics of the of the visit itself. Anton already mentioned at the start that Vladimir Putin is known for being a late

arrival and he came quite late. What time did he arrive in Pyongyang, Anton? Extremely early in the morning, like around 3 a.m. and prior to that, it's actually it's important to point out that North Korea was just one of his stops on the way, on his, let's say, wider Asia trip. Because before that, he just visited the Russian Far Eastern region, and he spent, I would say, some unnecessary long amount of time there, because his meetings got extended,

he went to talk to the crowds, and only after his, let's say, formal and informal meetings were done, he decided to hop on his plane and go to North Korea, which kind of gave a bit of optics to the situation, speaking, let's say, characterizing Putin's attitude toward North Korea. And then we also know that after his meetings in North Korea, he went to Vietnam, right? So it's either signaling that he first prioritizes his domestic affairs and doesn't really care about North Korea, or it means that he puts North Korea on the par with Vietnam and tries to build partnership with them equally. So of course, it's the speculation and it remains

to be seen how it's going to pan out. So approximately how much time was he in Pyongyang for? It wasn't a full day, was it? 22 hours or so. I've just arrived at arrived at two to three a.m. and then left at maybe one a.m. around midnight, maybe after midnight. And the day before he arrived, the North Korean newspaper had the dates there, June 18th to 19th, right? Oh, yes. Yeah, correct. And, but he did, he arrived on the calendar day of June 19th.

So there was no June 18th except for Moscow time. Yeah, of course. If you have the Moscow time, people justify that. Yeah. Uh, no, but, but then he does also do the same thing to Vietnam, I guess. So he was scheduled for June 19th, 2020. And he didn't arrive until the 20th in Vietnam. So he kind of just pushed the whole trip back.

And also, I think we have to remember that there, at least us, maybe some poor reporters might know this, that we're on the trip with him that we haven't figured out yet, but we don't know exactly what the schedule was supposed to be. We know that Putin was late, but we don't know how many events were pushed to the next day. So Kim Jong-un came out to the airport to meet him, didn't he? Yeah, Kim was there, you know, it's so many events. I mean, I don't even know if I can list them off.

Like, Kim arrived at the airport or Kim met him at the airport at 3am. But it's important to note that they're all- I wonder if Kim had been waiting a long time. I mean, I can't imagine he'd feel too good about that. Yeah, there were no crowds of people at the airport or the streets to greet them. So we still don't know if that means that they were brought out and then sent home, or if they just weren't brought out in the first place. But it is, I think we can safely assume

that they did plan to have crowds greeting them, lining all the streets of Pyongyang. But throughout all the coverage so far, you can't really see Kim expressing like annoyance or anything. Kim, if he was angry about it, he was don't know. So, you know, and visually, I was really struck by the photographs that I saw of very large banners featuring a portrait of Vladimir Putin by himself, hung by the roadside, presumably where the motorcade of Putin would take him when he arrived in Pyongyang. And I couldn't remember a recent time where any foreign leader was pictured alone without perhaps being together with Kim Jong-un. That was really quite a visually striking image. What do you think of that, Anton?

Yeah, indeed. It was very Ceausescu style dictatorship. I would say that Pyongyang definitely was preparing for Putin. Of course, they put those huge banners, sometimes several stories high high and they also kept pretty much all the windows in all buildings along the motorway lit up late at night so of course it also provided some visual effects to the to the arrival. Ud must have encountered like 1,000 photos of himself in his 22 hour journey. They gave him paintings of himself. They had portraits on buildings. On the roadside, they gave him a bust of his face. They created his face out of the human pixel cards made by kids at the concert. It was just continuously

flattering. I don't know how flattering that is. If you're a normal regular person, that would be quite awkward to see that many faces of you in this thread. Flattering Putin. Makes sense. That's kind of the role of you. Was there a sign that Putin was happy? He was pleased by all this? By this flattery? Why don't you do some some body language reading? Yeah, well, I wouldn't go that far. I'm not like a physiognomist or anything like that. I would say that Putin looked pretty content, but several things

actually stood out. For example, during his meetings, he was mumbling a bit too much. He couldn't read some time some of the of the paper that he was reading, like, during some open sessions with Kim Jong-un. And it's looked a little bit that the I cannot make any conclusions. But I think that the guy has definitely aged or that I can see that. Well, I really I wonder what all this means for South Korea. In any of the speeches or in the agreement, was South Korea mentioned at all? Not at all. But again, we know that Putin previously thanked and appreciated, at least

acknowledged, South Korea for not getting involved in the Ukraine conflict. And I suppose the Kremlin's line right now is to maintain more or less amicable ties with both Koreas. But of course, we will see how it unfolds. Yeah. And what did, uh, there was a Lavrov statement once he got back or where, I don't know where he was, but he made a short comment, something to the effect of, if you're trying to insinuate that this is a bad thing

for anyone like just South Korea or anyone, that means you have plans to attack. So as long as you don't wanna attack either one of us, everything's gonna be cool. This is just defensive in nature. So that's kind of the line. And we do have to wait to see if South Korea reacts in any way. Because what

was Yun saying as recently as last week, Yun is also not cold on Russia. Right. Lavorov basically said you got to read the article very carefully and see for yourself that it doesn't pose any threat to anyone. But of course, he will say that. In the other articles of the agreement, is there a lot of focus put on economic or trade cooperation? I wonder whether the military agreement is really the big part of it or should we be looking at other areas?

The agreement is called a treaty on comprehensive, the agreement is called, it's a treaty on a comprehensive strategic partnership, right? So of course it encompasses certain elements of economics. This agreement wasn't the only one that the two leaders signed. There was also one agreement on healthcare and the other one on cooperation, on the construction of the motor bridge across the Tumengan River. So economics did take certain part of the deal, and definitely they are going to pay

close attention to it. And the article in the treaty itself does have an article stipulating that the two sides are looking to expand their economic ties as well. Okay, so you mentioned a new bridge connecting Russia to North Korea over the two… That was the only concrete project named, right? Because not anything like naming a new special economic zone or anything like that, right? They mentioned that they would like to explore the possibility and work on the establishment of economic zones. But this was really indeed the only specific project that was mentioned. And we know how that goes typically when it's not concrete yet. And on the bridge, you know, they were talking about that bridge very specifically having multiple meetings back to back, you know, very high level, not Kim Jong-un,

but having high level meetings about it. And I think actually Kim Jong-un mentioned this maybe in 2019 when he met Putin, I'd have to put back and check. But I know for sure they were talking about that bridge a lot back in 2018, 2019, and nothing ever happened, not even digging anything as far as we can see in satellite imagery. So, and you know, China wants to move their ships through there, through that little channel

that they're blocked off on the Tumen River. So maybe they have to negotiate with China about the bridge too. Who knows? I would even add that this project has been in talks for like decades now. Oh, that's interesting. Okay, so it's nothing new. It's been a while since they actually started talking about it. But in the 90s, of course, they had some economic problems,

then Putin was trying his very weird dance with the West. North Korea wasn't the priority and then things started developing very differently. And now only now they're reaching, they're sort of like revisiting this project again. And just to give the background, since we forgot it, so they have a rail bridge that connects the two countries. They only share a very narrow border, which how many miles is it? How many

kilometers? 40 kilometers. And they only have a rail bridge and no road bridge. So they keep on talking about wanting to build a road bridge next to the rail bridge. And this road bridge, would it go on the North Korean side? Would it go into to Rajin Sonbong, the Special Economic Zone? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. That's certainly a big step if it does happen. Let's, let's wait and see on that one. Also depends on North Korea, because China built a bunch of these bridges in the last 10 years, and they're not using most of them. The bridge to nowhere where the North Korean side wasn't completed for a long time.

More than that too, there's a few of these bridges that they're just not using. So it would have to be backed by a whole lot of actual priority and initiative for it to go anywhere. How was the whole meeting between Kim and Putin played up in the Rodong Shinmun of the last day or two? This just came out like a few hours ago, so they were really late to report it. It was like a 14 page report with 11 pages of, you know, 10 different events. They went to, there's a report on putting going to Kim Il Sung Square.

I mean, there's so many little things that happened throughout the 20, 20 something hours. You know, they did an event at Kim Il-sung square that was set up just like a military parade but there was no military parade, some jets flying over. Then they had like a banquet, they went to a concert, they took turns driving a new limousine that Putin gifted him in violation of sanctions, they petted horses together, Kim gave him dogs, horses together. Kim gave him dogs. They exchanged gifts. They gave Putin the Kim Il Sung, what's it called, the Kim Il Sung medal. A high-state level award. Or sorry, a recommendation. They had little press conferences. They had the group meeting, the one-on-one meeting. It was just like a day. So that's all just a bunch of fluff language in the Rodongshim. But there is one place where they can go.

Yeah, right. They printed the whole agreement on an entire page in the Rodongshim so the North Korean public will see that. And then, yeah, so go on. There is one place that they were supposed to visit, but actually ended up not going to. And it's the Russian church. I was just about to ask about the Russian Orthodox Church. You say that was supposed to, so it was on the agenda that was supposed to visit it, but they didn't go there. Any reason why not?

I think we don't know for a fact whether or not Kim was supposed to go, but we do know Putin went at night right before he went to the airport. And we just don't know if Kim was scheduled to go or not. But if you think about it, Kim was with him at the airport and Kim was with him before he went to the church. So it was a very, it was a choice for Kim Jong-un not to go to the church. And they mentioned it in state media in text, but they didn't show it. And we were like anticipating before it all happened, like, are they gonna show, is Kim gonna join him in the church?

Are they gonna show it in domestic state media? And no. Where was he when Putin was in the church? So chilling in the car, or waiting outside because the Holy Spirit wouldn't let him in, or Adam. Could be. Right, how long has there been

an unorthodox church in Pyongyang? For about 20 years, the construction started in 2003 or two or three. Okay. And yeah, it's been there for a while. It's a North Korean priest who were trained in Russia, ordained in Russia. And the sermons, predominantly, of course, for the Russians who live in Pyongyang, who are actually, most of them, it's just diplomats, right? Yeah. So the service, did you say the service is mostly run in Russian or in Korean?

The priest, the North Korean priest, speaks Russian and the whole liturgy is held in Russian. priest speaks Russian and the whole liturgy is held in Russian. They even have a choir. Do you know if Putin had ever visited there before on a previous visit to Pyongyang? Well, he couldn't have because his last visit was in 2000 and the church was constructed years after that. So no, but for example Kim Jong-un's father, Kim Jong-un, who ordered the construction of the church, he did visit multiple churches and cathedrals in Russia, not only the Orthodox ones, but also he visited one Catholic, I think, cathedral in China. Okay, well, I wasn't aware that this was Putin's first visit to North Korea in basically 25 years.

So this is such a big occasion, very important to both countries. I wonder, you may not be aware of this, but in Putin's subsequent visit to Vietnam, was there a signing of a similar agreement? I mean, were the two visits similar?. I mean, it was with the two visits. Just got there, right? I'm similar. There are already official statements on the Kremlin's page, but unfortunately,

I didn't, I couldn't get my hands on it yet. So they're just having the talks in the last few hours, maybe. Okay. Yeah. But the, if Russia's trying to bring Vietnam into that new multipolar worldview that it has. But I read that, and I'm not, maybe you know better,

but I just read some analysis from others that it was mostly about existing military relationship in terms of weapons provisions from Russia to Vietnam and then other economic ties, but that Vietnam does not probably have plans to join an alliance with Russia. That's true. I would also highly doubt that Vietnam wants to join

this security framework, but at the same time, I also saw talks or discussions about Russia reopening its naval base in Vietnam. I don't know. It's a speculation. I don't know whether it's going to happen or not. Also speculation about doing that in North Korea. Yeah, but I do believe that if Russia chooses to open a naval base, Vietnam would make more sense, given its prior ties during the Vietnam War and the existence of that base and the infrastructure that used to be there back in the day. So why do they need a North Korean naval base or maybe on the west sea? On the west sea probably that's the best one right because

closer to China. I would certainly be surprised if that does happen since the US and Vietnam have done a lot of work and a lot of talking on growing their own military relationship and discuss bilateral security and military cooperation on various levels. That would be quite a strange turnaround to see Russia reopening a naval base in Vietnam again? Well, it definitely will be a challenge for Vietnam. But I think Vietnam is a whole arsenal of things how to balance interests of the, let's say, can I call them great powers? Gosh, well, this is, it's really fascinating to watch all this. And I imagine there'll be a lot more stories coming out on NK News and NK Pro giving analysis. Do you already do we already have some good analysis pieces available for our listeners to go and check out on NK Pro? Yeah, there are a few at least. I think there's like probably already eight stories or so on this whole summit.

So there's a... I would highly recommend checking our colleagues Shria's story on economic cooperation between Russia and North Korea and how they're trying to establish shadow economy. Also, please do check out Shadow Carol's article analyzing the summit and the agreements. And of course, our coverage of the agreement itself, of meetings, etc. That should give you some idea of how it went. Yeah, for subscribers to NKPro you could find Pyongyang Power Play, What to Make of Kim and Putin's Comprehensive New Treaty. That's an analysis written by Charo Carroll. So that's definitely worth checking out. Alright, gentlemen, any further thoughts about what we've seen or what we may see in the next couple of days on this? Any last thoughts to leave? You know, this is a giant media story, world media, but how do North Korea's adversaries react?

Do they then say that, oh, we have to make a new approach? This is the biggest threat to the United States in the world, whatever it was, or is it just going to be managing businesses as usual? So I'll be watching for that. And we have a lot left that's happening, all this stuff going on at the North, at the inter-Korean border, from the balloon saga to the incursions over the MDL, loudspeakers, all that. And then to the incursions over the MDL, loudspeakers, all that. And then the US ROK military drills in the coming months and how North Korea will react to that. What North Korea is doing at the West Sea,

NLL, the maritime border. So all sorts of stuff, nothing's cooling down. Yeah. I'm also having very mixed feelings about all this with Russia becoming very important to the Korean Peninsula. It's been a while since we've seen this for the last time. So I would love to see what those Russian people think inside Russia about this growing alliance and whether regular Russians actually perceive North Korea's worth of this alliance and whether it's a reputational blow or it's a prestigious thing for Russia to have such an ally.

Yes, so hopefully you'll be writing some stories about that, about the Russian reaction in the next few days. I'll be looking forward to reading those. Great, well I think that's where we will leave it for today. Thank you very much Anton and Colin for coming on this quick and mini roundtable to talk about the visit of Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang with Kim Jong-un. Thanks guys. Thanks, Jackie. Thank you. See you again soon.

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