North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Putin’s looming visit to North Korea, inter-Korean border tensions and more

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is set to touch down in Pyongyang for a “friendly state visit” from June 18 to 19, according to the Kremlin. During his trip, Putin will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and the pair may sign a “comprehensive strategic partnership.”  NK News CEO Chad O’Carroll (@chadocl) joins the […]

Welcome to a new realm of insights into the Korean Peninsula. At Korea Risk Group, we delve deep into the complexities of North and South Korea, offering bespoke analyses that empower decision makers. Whether you're in government, business or academia, our tailored solutions provide clarity in an opaque region. Let our team guide your strategy with data-driven insights and on-the-ground intelligence. Step into a world of informed decision making and visit KoreaRiskGroup.com today. Okay, hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. This short episode is recorded on the evening of Monday, the 17th of June, 2024.

And I'm online via StreamYard with Chad O'Carroll, founder and managing director and CEO and all things good of NK News and NK Pro. Chad, welcome on the show. and we're going to start the meeting yard with Chad O'Carroll, founder and managing director and CEO and all things good of NK News and NK Pro. Chad, welcome on the show. Hey, Jack. Good to see you again. Uh astute listeners will have noticed that we're recording

this on a Monday rather than the usual Tuesday and that's because I am bugging out and leaving the Korean Peninsula. Now is a good time to be leaving the Korean Peninsula, right, Chad, for a little holiday? Yes, it is, both for inter-Korean reasons and the weather, which is going to get very rainy in the weeks ahead due to the cheongma season.

That's right. Yes, I'm hopefully going to escape all that. I'll be back, of course, in two weeks' time, so I won't be gone for long. So what news stories have been grabbing your interest in the last few days, Chad? Well, obviously, we're anticipating the visit by Vladimir Putin to North Korea. Has he not gone yet? No, probably by the time this podcast is published, the summit will have taken place. So we've seen a number of flights that look related to preparations for the summit. And it looks like there will be some form of military parade based on Collins analysis

of satellite imagery at Kim Il-sung Square. It looks like there'll be a lot of pomp and splendor as there normally is in these state visits. And don't forget circumstance. That's also important. Comp and circumstance too. Yeah. Yeah. But that being said, we are expecting some moderation perhaps on what comes out of it publicly we'll soon see.

But Putin last week said something very interesting on South Korea, which was along the lines of him sort him publicly appreciating the fact that South Korea hasn't sent weapons to Ukraine. And reading between the lines, it looks like there's a kind of unspoken red line for Russia on that. And as long as South Korea doesn't breach it, I think it's unlikely that Russia is going to provide North Korea with any sensitive weapons technology, fighter aircraft, things of that ilk. So then there may be fewer controversial things that publicly come out of this summit than there could have been in another set of circumstances. But that's surprising. I mean, usually, you know, when one international leader flies from his home

country or her country, visits another country, there's got to be some good reason for it and you know Vladimir Putin doesn't travel overseas just for any old person, so you'd imagine that there'd have to be something substantive to come out of this to make him fly all the way to Pyongyang. Well, yes and no. I think, yes, he's flying a long distance, but he's also going to Vietnam afterwards. So there's some proximate benefit geographically that he's gaining by going. I think he, you know, this was being on the cards for a number of months. I think he it's in his interest to, to provide Kim Jong-un that high level participation in Kim's own country, because obviously North Korea has been a

really staunch supporter of Russia politically with weapons, ammunition support, very, very few countries are supporting Russia at the moment, especially to this level. So I think Putin wants to keep Kim Jong-un close and well appreciated. But I think I don't think we're going to see any like major announcements come out of this. There's been a lot of activity at like working level and tourism delegations with like exchanges, public security officials going to meet each other in their respective countries. So I think this is more of a sort of icing on the cake of a relationship that is already growing and integrating more. I keep wondering what China must make of all this and why China hasn't,

why Xi Jinping hasn't made a visit to Pyongyang or invited Kim to see him in Beijing yet. It seems unusual for China to be happy to play second fiddle in this way in its relationship with North Korea. The number three of China did go to Pyongyang. And this is the so-called year of friendship, the 65th anniversary of China, DPRK relations. And again, at the working level, there's been lots of activity between the two countries. So I think there's still strong activity, but yeah, the, the lack of very high level exchange i.e. summit level we might see it in the year ahead i don't know but i do think china is probably very interested if not concerned somewhat

about where this relationship goes yeah okay uh moving on to another topic, any news on cross border leafleting or loudspeaker broadcasts? That's all been a bit quieter since last week. Loudspeaker broadcasts were temporarily activated by the South Korean side, but despite the North Koreans apparently moving some loudspeakers out, we've not heard those have been, you know, if the tempo of those exchanges have continued, I don't think they have. But there has been a lot of reporting that started, was started by my colleagues, Yifang and Colin, who on satellite imagery detected some really interesting clearance of areas

along the MDL by the North Korean side, erection of new walls. I, to be honest, I'm not too familiar with the details of all of that. I've not been, been working on something else about South Korea for the last very long time. And so my eyes been off the ball and some of the more tactical stuff relating to this MDL activity.

Okay. Do you want to share some of that of what you have been working on? Yeah, sure. It's going to come out sometime. But you may remember that in the Moon Jae-in administration, towards the end of it, there were a number of high-profile experts in the US and other places who described the anecdotal evidence of Moon Jae-in's performance in various areas relating to democracy to make the case that the Moon administration had fundamentally reversed democratic progress in South

Korea. Ji-wook Shin of Stanford published a paper on this. Korea. Ji-Yook Shin of Stanford published a paper on this. Jong Pak, who's now a senior at East Asia secretary at state department. Sorry, if I've got that title wrong, those titles always confuse me. But she's, she's also the new Sam Kim new quasi point person on North Korea. And she also made a similar argument that due to Moon's stifling of human rights groups to support anti-leafletting initiatives, that there was, you know, lots of evidence of democratic

backfighting. Well, we just, we're two months into the unit, two years rather into the unit administration. So I thought I'd take a look at how he's been doing. And it's been extremely time consuming because I've had to go through hundreds of news reports across, you know, the full spectrum of South Korea's government relationship with its own people, media, et cetera. And I've just been sort of doing a comparison, uh, sector by sector. And also have managed to track down lots of data from major international NGOs monitoring bodies

organizations Which tracks off Chris performance across multiple indicators? And so I'm just putting it all together as a package to see whether There it was something unique to the moon administration or we're in broader trouble and the UN administration is making things even more worse. So keep an eye out for the piece to get our take on that. Can you give a tentative sneak preview, a little spoiler alert? One, I won't spell it all out, but one thing that I think we can all probably, that doesn't come as a surprise is that there are certainly structural issues in South Korea's government that do provide the sort of canvas for this kind of cosmetic democratic backsliding effect.

You mean no matter who is in the presidency? Yeah, just in different ways. And on the flip side, there are there is some progress from administration to administration, for example, the gender pay gap, or in general, gender socioeconomic differences, there's the gap between them. But there's a bigger question, is that down to the government or is it down to a sort of global pressure

in that direction, a positive uplift in that direction, and South Korea's sort of riding off that. But yeah, you'll have to wait till the full articles published and sorry for those of you who follow North Korea. This has taken me quite off the ball on deeper cases for a while but I wanted to do a good job on it and make make it exhaustive. So yeah. Yeah, and it's relevant because it touches on issues related to North Korea. Yeah, last week or last Saturday was the 24th anniversary of the June 15 joint declaration between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il. I didn't see any particular commemorations of

that event. It seemed to pass by fairly quietly. And in a week's time, we've got of course, the anniversary of the start of the Korean War. So that is, what, 74 years this year. I wonder if we'll be expecting any big events for that. Do you see anything on the radar? In North Korea, or here in South Korea? I don't believe there's going to be anything particularly noteworthy.

July 27th is also coming up. Yeah, North Korea's Victory Day. Yeah, I don't think there's going to be anything particularly notable. I may be wrong. It could also be, to be a Debbie Downer, it could also be a good moment for North Korea to remind the world of its differing views on territorial sovereignty. And we know this is an issue that's pending following Kim Jong-un's declaration at the start of the year that the NLL is illicit and lawless. And as we're awaiting a constitutional change in North Korea that will, I guess, define how the DPRK sees its amended border. The reason I mention that is just simply because Hamas used an anniversary also last year to

justify the start of its incursion into Israel. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. That's interesting. Yeah. And of course, this year is proving to, I mean, it's quite a long drawn out shakeout of the implications of what Kim Jong-un said at the plenary meeting in last December.

We're still sort of seeing how that's falling out. It doesn't look like it was all carefully thought through in advance. The ministries are still dealing with the changes and are broadcasting them. I just did an interview earlier today with a Zainichi Korean woman who was talking to her friends back in Japan and they're really in a state of chaos and confusion there because they, you know, for years, for decades, they'd been talking about the importance of unification and now they're being told basically not on the card, stop talking about it. Yeah, and during a recent visit to Tokyo I had it confirmed

to me that the North Koreans linked to Cheongryon or Chosun Sorum. Yes. Well surprisingly still unable to do their normal tours to North Korea or go back in and they were like one of the largest groups that went to North Korea of the sort of friendlier visitors to the DPRK and yet Russian tourists can go but that cohort in Japan which has long traditionally been very important to the DPRK are still being given the same treatment it seems as Westerners trying to restart embassies which as we know is still going nowhere. Although something to bear in mind, and I heard this after the interview, so it wasn't in the interview that will come out in a couple of weeks with Hyeong-soo Pak. She told me that 22 of the top leadership of the Chongryun group in Japan have been put on a list

by the Japanese government and they've been told in no uncertain terms that if you do make a visit to North Korea, your reentry visa to Japan will be canceled and you won't be able to come back. That's right. Yeah, I've met one of those individuals in the past and he told me the same thing. Yeah. So they haven't been able to go and that's been you know, that was even I think before COVID. So they haven't been able to go for some years. So but it will be interesting to

see whether some of the lower level people in Chong-Yuan are able to restart their visits later on this year. Yeah, the student, the school trips, for example, because I did see an announcement quite recently that North Korea has sent a substantial amount of money to Japan to help with these schools. So that they're still being funded. Every year Kim Jong-Un sends around $2.5 million, I think, to Chunghyang to support them. How does that money get there? That's an interesting question. How does he physically send that money, given that North Korea is not really on the banking system anymore?

Yeah, my working theory is it's rather a discount on what the Chunghyang have to give the North Koreans. Which still raises the question of how that takes place. But yeah, I'm not, maybe there's some kind of tithe that the Chongryon have had to give in the past. And there's a discount on that, on the community tax that they pay to know that's, that's my guess. That money doesn't usually go the other way around from North Korea. Okay Okay and that's where we're going to have to end it today. Thanks again Chad for coming on the the short episode this week. Yep thanks for hosting and have a good break in

do you need a lunch? Thank you I'll see you in a couple of weeks. All right take care. Bye. Join the Korea Pro Community and unlock a world of exclusive insights on Korea. As a Korea Pro member, you gain access to articles, expert analyses, and comprehensive reports that keep you ahead on Korean affairs. Plus, enjoy priority invites to our unique events in Seoul that connect you with key leaders and influences. Elevate your understanding of Korea. Join us today at koreapro.org slash podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today.

Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer genius, Gabby Magnuson, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions and fixes the audio levels. Thank you.