North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea’s closer ties with China, Russia — and what Washington can do

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

NK News Data Correspondent Anton Sokolin joins this week’s podcast to discuss North Korea’s deepening ties with China and Russia, starting with Premier Pak Thae Song’s meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing during a visit marking the 65th anniversary of the China-DPRK alliance treaty. He also previews Wang Huning’s upcoming visit to Pyongyang and explains […]

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Early-Byr tickets are now open with discount for NK Pro and NK News members. Space is limited to just 80 paying guests, so claim your seat. claim your seat soon. Hello listeners, welcome back to the NK News podcast. This week, we're looking at North Korea's deepening ties with China and Russia, from a new round of high-level diplomacy with Beijing to the murky networks behind Pyongyang's expanding trade and labour links with Moscow. Later, I'll speak with retired US diplomat, Susan Thornton,

about fire and fury, Trump Kim diplomacy, and what Washington should do now, as North Korea grows closer to both China and Russia. But first, I'm joined now, in the studio on Tuesday, July 14th, with NK News data correspondent Anton Sackland. Welcome back to the podcast, Anton. Hey, Anna. Hey, hey listeners. So we're going to start today by looking at the latest burst of diplomacy between Beijing

and Pyongyang. After North Korean premier Pak Te-Song met Chinese President Xi Jinping, during a visit marking the 65th anniversary of the China DPRK Alliance Treaty. That visit's now being followed by another major exchange with Wang Huning, one of China's top political figures and Xi's veteran ideological strategies set to travel to North Korea this week. Pach's visit was already notable because visits by North Korea and premiers to China, they're relatively rare. Anton, first, what did this meeting with Xi tell us about where China and North Korea ties are standing right now? Right. It's good that you know that it's very rare. Indeed, there has not been

many reports on previous visits at all. The previous one, the latest one, I think, dates back to 2018. It was by Pak Banjou back then. And before that, it was even earlier. So also about seven years before that. So it is indeed rare, and it marks a very important milestone in the bilateral relationship. Speaking of Puck's meeting with Xi Jinping, well, there is, of course, not much coming out of their official redouts, right? It's all about ideology. It's all about friendship.

But several things are important. They stood out. Their military alliance pact is at the center of their talks. Both leaders, when they met in May, agreed to hold during, to celebrate the event, the signing of the treaty. And of course, at this time, this visit kind of came as a follow-up to Xi Jinping's visit to Pyongyang. So the two officials, Xi Jinping and Pakhtason, they focused on deepening practical cooperation, stronger, voicing stronger support for each other, et cetera. Of course, highlighting revolutionary and historical ties

because that is kind of central to the two countries' relationship to their ideological ties. And another thing was that Kim instructed Pacti Son apparently to deepen and develop stronger, the strongest strategic relationship with China and convey this message to Xi Jinping. And it's hard to overlook another aspect, of course, the Taiwan issue, according to the Chinese state media without Pacti's own waste, North Korea's position that it supports China's one-China policy, meaning that Taiwan is an integral part of China.

So that was that. There were no specific economic initiatives announced. There was no specific talks about joint projects because, as we know, the bilateral agenda was discussed before. during the Sikkim summit in May when they discussed all the economic exchanges or the human-to-human exchanges, law enforcement, military ties, the CGB brought a gigantic delegation

feature in all major political and economic and military figures. So that was done back then. Now this visit came as just a follow-up and update, but it's still important because it's rare because they're focusing on their historical ties, because they are ramping up their meetings, their exchanges,

a while since we've seen such a slew of bilateral meetings and now we're coming to wanghounin right so another visit just less than a week after Pacti son traveled to China so Anton you just mentioned Wang Huning and today as I said we're recording it's Tuesday July 14 and you've literally just covered about this this news that Wang Hungin is going to Pyongyang how significant is it that China is sending someone of his rank and his political profile Right. Van Hunin is one of the most prominent politicians on the Chinese political arena stage. He's been around for very long. He's also not very young men. So he's a, we can rightly call him a veteran politician. It's a polite way to put it. Yeah. A veteran politician in the Chinese system who is basically a philosopher, is an academic, as a scholar of the communist thought, of the communist ideology, who studied deeply the deeply the, the,

the teachings of Karl Marx, whatever, Lenin. But he came to prominence when he basically started advising and steering the ideological doctrines of major Chinese leaders, starting with Jan Zemin. So that goes back to the 90s. Then we have Hu Jintao early 2000. And, of course, the latest example is Xi Jinping. So as far as I'm not a China expert, so whoever is listening, feel free to correct us, and we will take note of that.

The point I'm trying to make is that he was behind major doctrinal and ideological shifts that happened within the Chinese Communist Party. And when it comes to Xi Jinping, the main thing was, well, Xi Jinping is known worldwide for his Chinese, China's dream. And that is his kind of cornerstone of his political ideology, especially in the early days. And Wang is assessed to have left certain imprint on that. So he is not just a random guy.

He's definitely very well integrated into the Chinese communist hierarchy. He's very close to Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping trusts him because, well, I can't really confirm and probably can really say it, but it seems like he is really behind these doctrinal ideas and he has at least his actions or at least his instructions informed what Xi Jinping's ideology came out to be later. So that is important. and now we're seeing him going to Pennyano, of course, that raises an important question on what he's going to do there, but knowing his background, even though the redouts from

Shinkhua or from KCNA, they didn't really tell us the story of what they're going to discuss, but we can understand that it comes around right after the 65th anniversary of the signing of the military pact agreement, then they have this slew of meetings, and ideology probably is going to take center stage because that is something that brings them. together because their historical ties, the revolutionary, especially their revolutionary ties. We know about multiple North Korean military and future officials that participated that were active in China during the revolutionary period. And then, of course, the Chinese support during the Korean war. So all of this, it is those blood-forged bonds that they don't go away easily. And probably

they are going to be again at the center of this visits agenda. But of course, we're still waiting to see some more redoubts to cover it. And it will be interesting. But I do not think that we should get our hopes up. Probably it's going to be quite boring, actually. Okay. Well, that was going to be my next question. I don't want to speculate too much because neither Chinese state media nor

North Korean state media has said what is going to be on the agenda. But as we've touched on, this is coming on the heels of that meeting between Xi and Kim Jong-un, which, as you explained, Anton, you know, during that summit they discussed economic, military, law enforcement, humanitarian cooperation. If we are going to speculate just for a minute, what kind of areas do you think might be the main priority in terms of cooperation that Beijing and Pyongyang might discuss in talks coming up. Well, Wang, I'm not sure that closer ideological alignment probably, but that would entail a whole other array of questions pertaining to how they're, what exactly

because we know that ideologically North Korea and China, even though collectively put them in this communist basket, they are actually different. But at the same time, we're seeing stronger push within the Pyongyang system towards this China model, right? So a bit of more capitalism, a bit of more economic exchanges. So it's not opening to the outside world like China did, but it is allowing a certain room. So Kim Jong-in has witnessed how his country was very poor. and to transform it, he clearly sees that there is not much room for super strict government control. Of course, the government continues to hold reins of power, but to allow certain economic freedoms within certain limited kind of environment, that is something that they're trying to pursue.

Maybe it could be related to this to understand how China managed to do it and how it could be implemented in North Korea, but which is already being kind of the case. But while we're talking about this is relatively poor country, so to scale this, they need, they need some input. And maybe China can provide it. Another thing, which has been in the talks for a while now, is, of course, human-to-human exchanges. And when they talk about it, it's an euphemism for tourism, right? Tourism or business ties, we know that some Chinese businessman go into North Korea pretty regularly. But does that mean that they are ramping up their business ties?

Yes. and no, because we are not seeing official business deals, everything is kind of like hush-hash. So if we see more, that will be an indicator that, oh, indeed, they're building stronger commercial ties, stronger business ties. At the same time, even though there is no such, not so many visits like this,

we're seeing that their trade is on the rise, and of course, Colin our colleague covered multiple smuggling operations that are happening alongside the border. So there's clearly some interest on both sides in maintaining this momentum and this relationship. But I'm not sure this economic, particularly, this technicality aspect is going to be central to Wang's talks because he's more of an ideology, more of like a big picture guy. So we should expect something in that kind of domain, I would say that. Well, he's going to be in Pyongyang from Wednesday to Friday this week.

So, of course, we'll be following closely to see what does come out of his time. North Korea and will turn now to Russia's growing demand for North Korean workers and why one Russian mayor says his city simply can't afford them. Anton, the mayor of Orenberg recently said he tried to hire North Korean street cleaners, but that the plan fell through because the costs were just too high. First of all, tell us what exactly was he trying to do and why did the deal not work out? Right. It is important to explain a bit of context what's going on right in Russia because of the war, because of the special military operation, Russia has been experiencing labor shortages.

So that is something that is hurting the economy because Russia has recently reported that's had the historical law. Unemployment was at its historical law. So, of course, every man is busy being at the front lines, right, occupied there. So there's shortage, right? But housing has to be built.

Streets need to be cleaned. And for years, for decades, Russia has relied on Central Asian migrants, but Russia has recently kind of reached up the pressure on this immigration flows on the back of its far-right ideology that is trying to limit the migrant inflows from Central Asia. citing multiple factors is not really pertinent to our case but the point is Russia is trying to limit this sort of migration and is looking for ways to diversify labor inflows and Russia

is not only looking into North Korea, there is multiple other countries, there is India, there is even Afghanistan, they're making a deal with the Taliban to procure Afghani workers from Bangladesh, from Vietnam, China used to be really big. Before they got rich, they were all over-sackling instead of North Koreans, my birthplace,

It was all Chinese workers before the North Koreans took their spot. So there's been there. And this mayor in Orenburg, it's a city north of Kazakhstan. So if you are familiar with the geography, Kazakhstan, Westrop North, there's steps and there's pretty much nothing there. It's a city for Russia. So he's been looking for workers because he needs communal services and they are not being probably carried out very well.

So he turned to several suppliers, he talked to a few people, and what apparently the North Korean middleman told him that the prices are just outrageously high the cost, right, to procure one North Korean worker. But he referred, when he was saying that, he referred to this thing as if as if, it's not because the cost of procuring North Korean laborers is high, It's because the North Koreans themselves in North Korea make so much that they won't even lift their finger to go to Russia for these peanuts that he's offering there.

And of course, that was a little misleading there because, well, he announced that they're making probably something like around $1,700 or to $2,100,200 per month. Well, that is extremely huge salary for North Korea. And we know from experts that, no, the North Koreans do not regular workers, street cleaners, or, I mean, construction workers, they do not make even close to that, even half of that. No. This is the salaries that are common within the IT industry, illegal North Korean IT workers, maybe some officials, maybe someone who is an entrepreneur, but with ties to the government. that is maybe possible, but even that is a little bit exaggerated.

So be cautious. So then what was he referring to? And that is a more interesting question, because if we break it down how this procurement system works, we understand that, oh, the price, the cost that he named is exactly what has been circulating around, and we also confirmed independently, that this is the cost that is involved in the procurement of North Korean laborers. So it means that you need to sponsor their visas, you need to sponsor their insurance, you need to sponsor overhead kind of costs, right, if airfare as well, right?

And of course, you need to pay certain kickbacks for the Russian middleman. When I say visa, it's also an interesting case because we know that North Korean workers are processed as students in Russia and they are usually processed by this particular college and this college has multiple branches around the country. in order to bypass international sanctions because North Koreans are banned from making earning income abroad, right? So it involves multiple costs and that actually brings the price, the total, the price higher, and it's not really relevant to how much the North Koreans make inside North Korea. It's actually just about the middlemen that name their price.

They say, look, here is our North Korean workers. person you have to this, this, this and that, that adds up to this price. If you're willing to pay it, we can supply this many months. Well, let's stick with the Russia connection for our last topic and talk about a court case that starts with a failed corn shipment to North Korea, but ends up revealing much more about Pyongyang's sanctions evasion network. Before we get into the details, let's start with the basic story. Anton, what was supposed to happen in this corn deal and what went wrong? Right. A few years ago, basically a Russian man in the Far East was approached by North Koreans through their diplomats stationed there.

Because I think over there they have a consular section. And one of the diplomats working for the economic department approached this man saying, well, look, we need to get some corn. And, well, can you supply this much corn, right? So they said they wanted to get 5,000 tons, for example, but as a first shipment, right, but the total amount was supposed to be much bigger. And as the first batch is 5,000 tons, can you do that? He's like, all right, sure. Give me the advance payments.

They gave them some money. And the guy was like, all right, I will start shipping this corn. And then he started like coming up with this excuses. right, like, oh, I don't know, like a sanctions situation is very difficult and or like a customs procedures are too complicated or the government is levying new customs fees. So basically I sent you this much and you have to cover some additional costs and the North Koreans were like, what's going on? Hang on.

We already gave you like half the money. So you're and you undersupplied by now. Give us either give us the money back or the deal is off. So, and eventually basically the North Koreans took that case to court, and the court sided with the North Koreans. But the catch here is not just corn. Who cares about corn? Corn is kind of, it's central, but at the same time, it's tangential to the situation,

because at the center of this operation was an actual, actually Mongolian firm that the North Koreans tasked with processing payments on behalf of the real North Korean company, based in North Korea that wanted to get that corn, right? Because apparently this North Korean company couldn't wire money directly to the Russians. So they had to enlist the service of this Mongolian firm. The Mongolian firm in its turn is run by a former South Korean citizen and is actually South Korea sanctioned company. The individual running in this, the former South Korean National,

is also under sole sanctions exactly for the thing. that they were doing for processing payments on behalf of the North Korean regime and the companies, whatever. So it was functioned as a theoretical front company for North Korea. And despite that fact that this company was involved in it, the court completely overlooked it. It sided with the Mongolian firm that acted as a proxy for the North Korean company. So technical siding with North Koreans and the North Korean diplomats who represented them in court and etc. So this basically little corn debacle just exposed how these sanctions operations,

how the sanctions evasion operations work, how the North Koreans utilize from companies, how they rely on a whole bunch of networks, how they can even entice former South Korean citizens to participate in these kind of schemes. And imagine that's just corn. Imagine how many other deals there could be that we just are not even aware of. Well, Ander, you've just touched on the fact that this.

particular court case, it focused on the fraud and it didn't really deal with the sanctions evasion side of this of this corn transaction. Is that surprising? Like what does it tell us about how Russia is handling these North Korea linked cases? Right. So it was early on. It was still early in the partnership when the deal was supposed to happen, right? But just the court case was settled only recently, only a few months ago. And I'm sure there could be some further hearings. I'm I'm not entirely sure, but there could be some appellate court hearings, whatever. So it happened early on, and at that time, it was kind of new. Both countries were coming out of the pandemic, so it was new.

The businessman tried to figure out approaches how to cooperate with one another. But again, the KSim demonstrated that diplomats, North Korean diplomat station in Russia, they had access all alone to business networks, to companies, they meet with all kinds of people. But this case, even though it's illustrative of this little scandal that happened between them, it's also kind of symptomatic because even though it was early on in the partnership, we are seeing other cases similar to this, where they just demonstrate that the North Koreans and Russians don't really trust each other and are reaping the benefits whenever they can, basically robbing each other, scamming each other whenever it's possible.

So it's a very hard, it's a very young partnership. and it just shows how vulnerable it is to individuals with malicious intense and how just the Russian minor businessmen or a North Korean entrepreneurs, they're just ready to line their pockets whenever there is an opportunity presents itself. Well, big picture. Ultimately, what should we be taking away from this case? Is it just kind of a strange one-off scam or does it tell us something, you know, about more broad, about how Russia DPRK-TRA is expanding.

And as you've touched on already, how messy, how informal, and how really risky it can be. It's just one of many cases. There is definitely many more. We have seen others. It's either the North Koreans are suing the Russians or the Russians suing North Koreans. It is interesting because at this point, North Korea is entering this formal relations with the Russian authority. So just think about it. North Korea is under tons of sanctions.

Has it ever appealed any kind of sanctions moved by the U.S., for instance? Has it ever actually even entered litigations in the U.S., for instance? No, it hasn't ever. Well, maybe there were some cases I'm not aware of. But the thing is, in Russia, they are becoming an active subject of this business relations. They are actually part to business deals, and they know how to represent themselves. They know who to hire to conduct this court hearings, how to interact with different actors. It's just showing that the relationship is evolving, it's maturing, but at the same time, it's still early to call it a properly mature partnership.

For now, it's very transactional and very based on tangible benefits. Whoever can get them, they win. Well, that's all we have time for today. but if you want more details on the stories we've discussed, make sure to check them out on NK News and NKPro, and I'll have them all linked in the show notes of this episode. Anton Sackland, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.

And after the break, we'll shift to US policy and speak with retired senior diplomat, Susan Thornton, about fire at fury, Trump Kim diplomacy, and what Washington should do now. So stay tuned for that. I'm now joined by Susan Thornton, a retired senior U.S. diplomat, who spent nearly three decades at the State Department,

including as acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. She's now a senior fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Sinai China Center, director of the forum on Asia-Pacific Security at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and a non-resident senior fellow at Brookings. Susan had a front row seat

to one of the most dramatic shifts in recent U.S. North Korea relations from the Fire and Fury tensions of 2017 to the first Trump-Kin summit in Singapore. She's also worked extensively on China, Korea and broader Asia-Pacific security issues. And today we're going to talk about how dangerous 2017 really felt from inside government, what the summit diplomacy got right and what it got wrong, and what Washington should do now as North Korea expand its nuclear arsenal

and moves closer to China and Russia. It is important. Thank you so much for joining us from New York today. Thank you. So great to be with you, Alana. So, Susan, I wanted to start by going back to your time in government. You were serving during one of the most intense, unpredictable periods in recent U.S. North Korea relations from Fire and Fury to the opening of direct summit diplomacy with Kim Jong-un.

When you look back at that period now, what stands out to you the most? I guess what stands out to me the most is how volatile and unpredictable that period really was. and in many ways surprising. I think it was surprising the way that the international community came together in the beginning of the Trump administration to really put a lot of pressure on North Korea at that time, in spite of the fact that one might think that because Trump had been so volatile in his policymaking, that others would not have come around to following him in this kind of very kind of risk-tolerant approach to, relations with North Korea. There was a lot of solidarity in the international community. I think I was quite worried about the fire and fury period, obviously, especially given that the national

security team at that time, I felt wasn't really that experienced and of course didn't know, frankly, much about North Korea. We had people at obviously the State Department and other agencies around government who had been around this issue, but the top team and the, the in the White House had not. And it was a bit unnerving. I remember a meeting with the National Security Advisor, General McMaster, and the South Korean foreign minister at that time, Foreign Minister Kong, in his office where I think he was trying to basically let her know that the Trump administration was serious about putting a lot of pressure on North Korea. And, and her being pretty uncomfortable with a lot of the statements and approaches that she was hearing.

So it was an uncomfortable time. I think it was very surprised by the way the Chinese and the Russians came on board with the sanctions at that time. Just a lot of unanticipated moves and volatility and unpredictable. From a personal perspective, I had just started working in journalism in Korea at the time. And from the outside, it felt like that shift from threats of conflict to, it felt almost suddenly to leader to leader diplomacy, it looked incredibly abrupt. Did you feel it was that same way inside the government as well? Yes, but I think we have to remember back to the first Trump administration. None of us really knew what Trump's foreign policy style was going to be.

and this is his foreign policy style now that we've seen it in action for many years since then. It's the buildup of kind of leverage and threats and then the pivot to diplomacy that we've seen several times now since. So I think at the time it felt very jarring. But now looking back on it, it seems like this is really a Trump style kind of diplomacy. That period, of course, eventually led to the Trump Kim's summit process, which was historic in many ways, but ultimately did not produce a lasting agreement. So I want to ask you about what lessons policymakers should draw from that experience. So as in looking back, what do you think that the US got right in the Trump-Kim diplomacy,

and what did it get wrong? I'll have to say that I was certainly not a fan of the Trump way of foreign policy, and I'm still not. but I was a booster of the idea that we could talk to anyone and that we, and Trump was certainly willing and still is clearly willing to talk to anyone if he thinks he can get some progress on a intractable issue. And there's no kind of political cost that he will pay, which is maybe somewhat unique to him. But he's, even if there was a political cost, I think he's willing to pay it and he's willing to get out there and explain to people why it's important that he

sit down with someone and meet with them. And of course, in the case of North Korea, if you're not talking to Kim Jong-un, you really aren't sure if the picture that you're getting is the one that you need to be getting. So having access to him because Trump was willing to meet with him was, I thought, something that was a great opportunity and that we should try to take advantage of. The downside, of course, to Trump-style diplomacy, unfortunately, is that the preparation is not done. And there's a lot of impatience and a lot of kind of ADD-type behavior. Like, if we'll do this and we'll throw everything we've got at it and we'll put a lot of skin in the game and fly here and fly there. But if it doesn't work within three weeks, we're out of their kind of idea.

And that is typical, and we see it also ever since, basically, in terms of Trump's foreign policy. So I think, unfortunately, they created this opportunity. There was a lot of solidarity in the international community. And then there just wasn't the ability to plan and strategize and have a drawn-out kind of negotiation that could have taken advantage of all of that. And they tried, I know Steve Beacon, when he was. was the special representative for North Korea in advance of that Singapore summit. And then again, with Hanoi, tried very hard to meet the North Koreans to, he went to Pyongyang. But it just wasn't really time. And a negotiation with the North Koreans takes an incredibly long time because of the

history and the deep mistrust. And you've got to go over a lot of old ground. And it's just not going to work if you're trying to do it with shortcuts. So then you had left government by the time of the Hanoi summit, but based on your experience during the earlier phase of that process, what do you think the breakdown revealed about the assumptions that perhaps each side was bringing to the table? Yeah, I think probably Trump wasn't super well indoctrinated on all the details of what it was that his team was trying to accomplish and there was infighting, as we know, within his team. And of course, John Bolton was a principal actor at the time. And we know that he's always been staunchly opposed, basically, to negotiations with North Korea in any form and very skeptical

of any denuclearization kind of agreements and was going to be very difficult about any kind of ultimate deal. And then there was on the North Korean side the hope that they had gotten from the Singapore summit and the statement that they'd had been able to engineer and all of the press around that. They thought they were on the precipice of some kind of monumental change. And so, and I think probably miscommunication was an issue too in that summit. So that sort of both sides were surprised. I think for Trump, he felt like this was just one step in a process and that he and Kim could get back together again in a future time and take this all up again and try to take the next step. For the North Koreans, it was more, I think, of a make or break kind of event. And maybe the Americans

didn't fully appreciate that, or at least certainly Trump didn't. So they did meet one more time, of course at the DMZ, but after the failure at Hanoi, it seemed like that was for the North Koreans, at least the end of the prospects. You've just touched on the planning and preparation or perhaps the lack thereof that went into these summits. And I want to ask you a little bit more about that because one criticism that we've heard during that period is that leader level diplomacy, it moved faster than working level, the working level process underneath it.

Susan, would you say that's a fair criticism? Yeah, I definitely think that's a fair criticism. And it wasn't for lack of trying, I think. It's just so difficult to get access to the North Korean negotiators. And again, I think the Trump administration was quite forward-leaning, at least the people who were responsible for negotiating. And they had a lot of room to run from the Trump administration to try to get things nailed down. It's just that North Korea, again, it's just, it takes so long. It's such a

difficult and complicated and opaque system. And whether or not the North Koreans are getting instructions that they can actually operate from, nobody's really knowing whether or not that's happening. So, and all the time, there's this kind of self-imposed deadline of a summit meeting coming. So again, it's the North Koreans can stonewall and play for time. But, and all the time, And of course, that works to their advantage in this scenario. And the Americans are desperately trying to get things set up and nailed down. And the North Koreans are just not able to do it. Let's talk about it now about where US policy stands currently.

Because Washington still officially talks about denuclearization. Of course, North Korea has continued expanding its nuclear and missile capabilities. Kim Jong-un appears more confident than ever in the country's nuclear status. Of course, it's the million dollar question. Is denuclearization still a realistic policy goal? Or has it now become more of a long-term aspiration? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I feel like denuclearization is the goal,

but the goal that cannot be stated. So we've seen recently, of course, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping meeting with Donald Trump and in the communiquez afterwards, at least on the U.S. side, mentioning that they have a common position that North Korea must not have a nuclear weapon. Then we see Xi Jinping going to Pyongyang. The communique is coming out of that meeting. Don't mention denuclearization. The Russians, the foreign minister in Russia, has said already in the past that denuclearization is a closed issue at this point. So it seems like the major powers

realize that even though they hope that denuclearization can be broached again in the future and that they understand that it's still a violation of the NPT and a cause for great concern, it's not something they can take up immediately. Now, whether the Trump administration thinks so or not is another question. And they haven't really been too forthcoming about what their approach would be if they would get North Korean diplomacy back on track. It really, I don't want to oversimplify, but denuclearization really just seemed to be the sticking point when it comes to any and all dialogue with North Korea. Is there a way to pursue interim steps with Pyongyang without appearing to accept it as a nuclear weapon state? I think we can pursue steps with North Korea

and define it in any way we like, whether North Korea understands it that way and how they broadcast it to their domestic population and how they make use of it in their own propaganda is another question and how much tolerance we're going to have for that is going to come into sort of focus as we pursue some other kind of diplomacy with them. I think it's fair to say a lot has changed in the landscape here on the peninsula since that last round of diplomacy with Trump and Kim, particularly in terms of North Korea's relationships with countries like China, Russia. What do you think that Pyongyang would actually want now in exchange for returning to talks? Yeah, it's the $100,000 question in a way. It used to be that North Korea was quite interested in getting

diplomatic recognition. So there was always talk about whether or not U.S. North Korea relations would be normalized and we would establish liaison offices or even embassies. That does not seem to be such a carrot for them anymore. As you say, they've gotten very now close relations with both Russia and China. That's happened pretty recently and is a big change from six or seven years ago when we were last talking about this and having the Trump diplomacy going on. So I think North Korea's sort of wish list has been cut way down. And I don't even think, and as we've seen even, I don't even think the prospect of sort of meeting with the U.S. president is as much of a carrot to hold out as a grand prize for North Korea as it was in the past.

When Trump went to Busan for the APEC meeting last year, apparently he tried to meet with or he asked about meeting with Kim Jong-un, and the answer came back as a, no, we're not really interested in that at the moment. That tells you a lot. And I think the North Koreans are probably still recalibrating. I think they probably would like to have some kind of relationship with the United States if they could. They would like to be able to triangulate among Russia, China, the U.S., and Europe, and anyone else they can find to have some kind of relationship with and gain some benefits from. But it's certainly not the kind of pressing issue that it was in the past.

So I think that's a real challenge for the U.S. government going forward is how to engage North Korea and what would North Korea want from that. My own view is that they're probably not going to be very interested until after the Russia-Ukraine wars comes to some kind of at least ceasefire, if not conclusions. Until that happens, I think it's going to be very hard to get North Koreans to engage. It definitely seemed like part of Kim's interest in meeting Trump was, as you said, that international recognition and being legitimized on the international stage. But it's so striking to me when we see images like when Kim went to Beijing not so long ago of Kim and Putin and Xi Jinping side by side. It almost seems like this is the new stage where he's being legitimized. And I do want to ask you a little bit more about China and all of this because you've so much. experience working on China and East Asian more broadly. For years, Washington has treated Beijing as

almost an essential source to any kind of serious North Korea strategy. But the regional picture, as we've just been discussing, it just looks so different now. How do you think Beijing sees the North Korea problem today? Yeah, I think this policy toward North Korea has really never changed. The one, as I mentioned, big surprise. was the extent to which they came on board for sanctions against North Korea in the early first Trump administration. And I thought a lot about that because it really went against China's principled foreign policy to lean in so directly on sanctions that affected the kind of humanitarian sort of situation for people on the ground in North Korea. And they had never

agreed to that before. And I have to think that was mostly about trying to find a way to deal with the new Trump administration after Trump came in and everyone was so caught off balance about how to deal with that. But they've spent a lot of time now. Of course, China and North Korea relations at that point were extremely poor. And then after COVID and the closure of the border, if anything, things were worse. She Jinping did make several trips or he made a trip to North Korea after not going there in the sort of run up to the Hanoi and Singapore summits, they did some restoring of their relationship at that point. But then during COVID, things really went dark. And it's taken a long time for the Chinese to be able to start up exchanges again with North Korea. I guess the flights and the train going

across the border. People flows have all just recently restarted. So the Chinese have worked over years to get back to normal relations now with North Korea. Their premier has just recently now been in Beijing for several days right after Xi Jinping's visit last month to Pyongyang. So they're really making an effort to repair things. I think the Chinese are, they don't look at North Korea as their policy as a function of kind of anything other than this is a country on our border. We have to keep stability. We have to maintain a relationship with them. We have to have have good relations with them, hopefully. And it's a volatile kind of regime. They do things that we don't like. They're problematic for us. But they're not going anywhere and we have to

deal with it and make sure that we can manage it and handle it. And it's a kind of a resignation, I guess I would say, from Beijing's point of view. And I think the relationship with Russia now that the North Koreans have really doubled down on, and especially in the security and military area, probably gives Beijing some pause. So that's another reason for pushing and stepping up and getting this relationship back into some kind of shape where they can make sure that's they know what's going on in North Korea and talk to one another. Let me ask you a little bit more about that improvement we've seen. Russia and North Korea have grown so much closer in the past few years.

Do you think that reduces China's leverage over North Korea, or do you think it makes Beijing even more determined to try and get back to the place where it was with North Korea? Yeah. I think it probably made the Chinese a bit uncomfortable. and pressed the point that they need to repair this relationship. But it was probably always on the cards that they were going to be moving in this direction anyway. China and Russia don't really provide the same things for North Korea. Russia is really a kind of a, I would say it's more of a

temporary lift for North Korea. It's probably not a durable long-term thing that North Korea can count on. And it's more in the security side. Russia doesn't have too much that it can provide to North Korea in the way of kind of its economic livelihood. But China is very important, obviously, for North Korea's economy, and that's going to continue to be the case. So I think it's both. It's just normal getting back to relations with your neighbor, but also certainly probably driven a little bit by some looking to the north of the border and a little bit of concern there. I wouldn't overplay that, but I do think that is a little bit of a factor. We've briefly touched on G's visit to Pyongyang. I just want to remind listeners, Xi Jinping visited Pyongyang.

It was early June this year. It was his first trip to North Korea in seven years. He met Kim Jong-un during a summit that both sides framed as a major step forward in China-DPR-K ties. Chinese state media said the two leaders reached an important consensus and discussed expanding cooperations in areas like politics, trade, transportation, tourism, culture, border exchanges. North Korea's readers also emphasized political, economic, and cultural cooperation, notably avoided any mention of denuclearization. Given that context, what message do you think that Xi and Kim were trying to send to Washington, to Seoul, and even to Moscow?

Yeah, they've been talking now about this consensus reached at this meeting. That's something that was also prominently featured, of course, after the Trump-she meeting in Beijing in May, what the consensus is in terms of which, what each side understood by the consensus is a question, and we don't know the answer really to that. But I assume the consensus is about stability, about some kind of agreement to keep this relationship on a more steady footing than it's been on for the last decade or so, for sure. And what the understanding is about Kim Jong-un's intentions in terms of the Korean Peninsula, his weapons programs, missiles, etc., testing of nuclear weapons.

The Chinese have been adamantly opposed to North Korea's testing of nuclear weapons and have brought a lot of pressure to bear on the North Koreans about that. We have not seen a nuclear weapons test in many years now, probably mostly because of China's unhappiness over the last test. So we don't really know exactly what they have in mind, but certainly the beefed up economic exchanges, beefed up people to people exchanges, cultural exchanges. This is all a part of this idea, I would say, of keeping the relationship on track, steady, not letting it on again, off again, tempo that we've seen recently.

So we have North Korea more confident. its nuclear status. China and Russia playing larger role in the US still trying to figure out whether diplomacy is possible. I do want to round out our conversation today by looking at future policy options. Susan, if Washington does decide to make re-engagement with North Korea priority, where do you think that it should begin? I think it's probably the case that in the Trump administration, the next two years, presumably, there will be a point at which, Trump himself gets reanimated by the North Korea problem. We can talk about what should happen, or we can talk about what will likely happen. If North Korean diplomacy gets reanimated in the Trump

administration, it will be leader-led. It will be probably ill-prepared, and it probably will not get us very far, but it may get us another sort of spectacular summit, let's say. It would be nice if that could be well prepared, coordinated with the South Koreans and other allies in the region and have some kind of tangible, durable outcome that would be good, maybe not wide CVID-type denuclearization, but some outcome that would be positive and a step on the road toward doing more. I'm not sure that is what would actually come out of that, but that's what I would hope would be the case. So a sort of step toward more management. If we had a different administration and we were looking at a long-term process to try to really do something about the whole complex of problems on the Korean Peninsula and not just the nuclear program, because I really think you can't separate things out like that anymore, then you would. would really try to get a kind of a multilateral process, I think, going with other neighbors.

At Chinese, if they're not involved, they're going to be sabotaging. So it doesn't really do any good to leave them out. It's just going to end up in the end on doing whatever progress may have been done. A real problem at the moment, in my view, is the sort of North-South developments and standoff. And we haven't really talked about. that, but it's very hard to see how to get the North-South diplomacy now going again after the constitutional changes in declarations in North Korea about hostile state, et cetera. The Trump administration was never a big fan of coordinating first with South Korea on its North Korea diplomacy. It's a very tough position for, I think, the South Korean government to be in. They have this

phrase of, they'll be the pacemaker and Trump can be the peacemaker. That's a holding pattern for where we are at the moment and it's fine because nothing is really happening. But we've really got to make sure that we're prepared for some kind of an eventual provocation from North Korea and at the same time try to figure out how to get North Korea, South Korea, China and the U.S. all on the same page when it comes to this. It'd be nice to include the Russians and the Japanese, but at the moment it just seems like including Russia is a non-star. And I really think, as I said, without the Ukraine war coming to some kind of conclusion,

it's really going to be difficult to tackle diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula. As you've just touched on, it feels like we're almost at a historic low when it comes to inter-Korean diplomacy. As you said, E.J. Mion has called on President Trump to play the peacemaker. He'll play the pacemaker. But how do you think that Washington should coordinate with Seoul or should it at all? Oh, it definitely should. This is really, this issue is really an issue of sort of Korean national identity, right? And it's Korea's future. The U.S. should not just take the issue over and think it knows what's best. We're not going to know. We're not going to know what's best in that region. And this is something that, frankly, we're not very good at in our foreign policy listening to people on the ground telling us how it is, right? And if we don't do that, we're not going to do that, we're going to make mistakes, and we've seen that already. So I hope that we can coordinate closely with our South Korean allies. It's very difficult in South Korea. It's very divided on these issues.

Everything's politicized, so it's not easy. And that's something that I hope South Korean society itself can work on, because they really do need to be much more united around whatever the eventual policy is going to be toward North Korea. It tends to be very fractious. But I think it is a an issue of great emotion and national identity in South Korea, so it's understandable that people have strong views. And what we don't want to do is damage the alliance in the process and damage U.S. South Korean relations. So I think the U.S. needs to take care and husband its friendships at the moment. Before we wrap up, I do want to take a step back and zoom out from kind of day-to-day policy debate. And Susan, last question I do want to ask you,

if you were advising the maxed US team working on North Korea, what assumption would you tell them to question first? I think I would tell them that there are real politics in North Korea. It's not just whatever the leader says goes and he can do whatever he wants. Every country has real politics, whether it's an authoritarian dictatorship or not. And they really need to try to think harder about. about what is going to be acceptable within that very different North Korean political context. That was Susan Thornton, retired senior U.S. diplomat and former acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Susan, thank you so much for your time today. Great to be with you, Alana. Thanks. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. Our thanks to Brian Betts and David Choi for helping make this podcast happen. For more reporting, analysis and expert insight on North Korea, visit NK News for the latest stories and NKPro for deeper analysis, data and research tools. You can also watch this episode on YouTube and be sure to follow us on social media for the latest updates, clips and behind the scenes content.

I'm Alana Hill. Thank you for listening. And we'll be back next time with more on the stories shaping North Korea.