On 17 October, the Yonhap news agency confirmed through North Korean media that the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s legislature, had amended the constitution 10 days earlier to explicitly define South Korea as an ‘enemy country’. Over the past week, North Korea has taken a series of high-profile actions to demonstrate its strength to South Korea. At noon on the 15th, North Korea blew up the military demarcation line between the two countries north of the Gyeonggi Line, the Donghae section of the inter-regional highway, cutting off both sides of the road. In response, South Korea conducted a symbolic ‘counter-fire’ on its side of the demarcation line, firing German-made Taurus cruise missiles capable of penetrating the ground for the first time in seven years.
North Korea accused the South Korean military of using drones to enter its airspace and even infiltrated the capital Pyongyang on the 3rd, 9th and 10th of the month to distribute anti-North Korean leaflets. Although the South Korean military has denied any involvement, observers believe this is the ‘drone version’ of the two sides’ past psychological warfare, which has evolved from the traditional methods of loudspeakers and air-dropped balloons. Given the widespread use of drones in modern warfare and the reality of multiple battlefields, it is clear that North Korea’s harsh response is not an act of grandstanding, but rather a ‘might makes right in the face of strength’ approach to express itself more forcefully.
On 9 October, North Korea appointed a new defence minister and agreed to test-fire 240 mm guided rocket artillery shells with a maximum range of 67 km to hit the target that would completely cover the South Korean capital Seoul, about 50 km from the 38th parallel, in the event of a war between North and South. On 11 October, the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) issued an operational readiness directive, ordering the joint artillery units in the border area and the units carrying out important fire attack missions to go into a state of full fire readiness. On the 11th, the General Staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) issued a combat readiness directive, ordering the joint artillery units in the border areas and the units conducting significant firepower strikes to go into a state of full fire readiness and threatening that further detection of South Korean drone strikes would be considered a ‘declaration of war’. The DPRK also announced that eight artillery brigades on the DPRK side of the 38th parallel had been placed on ‘stand-by’.
However, observers find it unusual that Russia has seized the opportunity to strengthen diplomatic interaction with the DPRK and even to consolidate joint defence commitments, promising to send troops to help the DPRK in the event of an ‘invasion’. At a delicate time when the battlefield struggle between Russia and Ukraine has entered a critical phase and Israel and Iran are preparing to ignite a war in the Middle East, the Korean peninsula, known as one of the world’s powder kegs, has once again deteriorated due to North-South relations, adding colour to the great power chess game.
The three hotspots are closely linked by a strong internal correlation and logical chain. The United States has no time to pay attention to the normalisation of US-North Korean relations, which has created an opportunity for North Korea to take advantage of the situation and try to break its isolation by trying to resume North-South Korean relations and US-North Korean relations. Russia, on the other hand, needs to further strengthen its diplomatic focus on the East. It is ready to take advantage of the situation to exert pressure on Northeast Asia and to work closely with North Korea to achieve its goal of encircling and defeating the enemy in order to diffuse and balance US and European pressure.
On 14 October, Russian President Vladimir Putin submitted to the Duma a bill on the ratification of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement between Russia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Article 4 of the treaty states that if one of the signatory parties is attacked by force by one or more states and is in a state of war, the other party shall immediately provide military and other assistance by all available means. The alliance agreement between Russia and North Korea is a bilateral matter within the sovereign, constitutional and international law competences of the parties and in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. However, the timing of Putin’s request is intriguing. The agreement was signed with Kim Jong-un during Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June this year.
Putin’s submission of the Russian-North Korean alliance treaty to the National Assembly for consideration and approval, in order to make it a document with legal force and strategic deterrence, is a concrete demonstration of the close interaction and mutual cooperation between the two sides. It is difficult to say who is more active between Russia and the DPRK, or who needs whom more. In truth, this is a result of the emotional cohesion of the two ‘lone shepherds’ and their joint efforts to counter external threats. However, the bilateral strategic need to strengthen Russian-North Korean relations, especially the military alliance, is not due to a sudden change in the situation on the peninsula or the deterioration of inter-Korean relations, which prompted Vladimir Putin to legalise the agreement and send a signal to the outside world.
In June this year, the two Koreas accused each other of dumping large quantities of waste paper and soil from weather balloons. In the same month, Putin visited North Korea for the second time in 24 years and the two sides signed a military alliance agreement. However, it is difficult to say whether Putin’s failure to submit the Russian-North Korean treaty to the legislature for ratification in time for his return was due to the fact that the relevant procedures needed more time, or whether the Kremlin deliberately waited to see what would happen. In any case, it is clearly unusual for Putin to take such a critical step at a time when inter-Korean relations have suddenly thawed.
In fact, the key turning point in this period of deteriorating inter-Korean relations came on 30 December 2023. On that day, Kim Jong-un pointed out at a Workers’ Party meeting that the inter-Korean relationship was not an inter-Korean relationship, but a hostile wartime relationship, and proposed to completely cut off bilateral land transport links. Based on the latest and highest definition of bilateral relations, the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly decided in January this year to dissolve the long-standing ‘Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland’, the ‘National Economic Cooperation Bureau’ and the ‘Geumgangsan International Tourism Bureau’. The DPRK National Assembly also accused South Korea of making ‘reunification through assimilation’ and ‘systemic reunification’ a national policy for nearly 80 years, which contradicts North Korea’s national policy of reunifying the country ‘on the basis of one nation, one state and two systems’. Therefore, North Korea has said that ‘national reunification can never be achieved’ in relations with the South.
The main reason for the rapid deterioration of South Korea-North Korea relations is North Korea’s deep disappointment and dissatisfaction with the inter-Korean and inter-American relations, which did not meet North Korea’s expectations and did not progress after many warm interactions in 2018, especially after the Singapore, Hanoi and Panmunjom summits. In particular, the failure of the United States to find a solution for the lifting of sanctions in exchange for Pyongyang’s denuclearisation by the end of 2019, in line with its expectations, has caused great disappointment in North Korea. The strategic trust between North Korea and the United States has long been in serious deficit, and US-North Korea relations have once again reached an impasse as party changes and domestic political struggles in the United States have come to the fore. At the same time, North Korea continues to take decisive steps towards ‘de facto nuclear armament’ and a ‘unified nuclear missile strategy’, making it impossible to lift US-led sanctions and creating a worsening, even deadly, vicious circle between the two countries.
With the Russian-Ukrainian war at a stalemate and relations between China and the United States severely strained, American attention to Northeast Asia is not possible. This situation is providing North Korea with space and diplomatic and security leverage to regain strategic favour with China and Russia. At a time when unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are at the forefront of the world’s debate on how they have ended the era of tanks and changed the course of warfare, South Korea’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have repeatedly entered North Korean airspace, objectively deepening North Korea’s hostile assessments and countermeasures. This situation is the unavoidable responsibility of South Korea.
Russia’s strong support for North Korea shows that, on the one hand, Russia is indeed strengthening its ‘pivot to the East’ strategy in its foreign policy and, on the other hand, it is showing a rather pronounced pragmatism and leverage thinking by treating relations with North Korea as ‘reheating the old dish’. Putin’s first visit to North Korea in 24 years clearly shows that since he came to power in 2000, his focus on relations with America, Europe and China has led him to neglect and treat Pyongyang, his former East Asian neighbour, former war buddy and old friend, coldly. Now, however, in the face of Western military, diplomatic, economic and financial pressure, he has been forced to greatly enhance North Korea’s diplomatic status and strategic role by reopening the long-closed gates of Pyongyang and signing an alliance agreement in order to gain a solid and reliable strategic backyard and establish a common eastern line in the Asia-Pacific region against the strategic dimensions of America and NATO. Similarly, Russia has fully consolidated its ‘New Era Partnership of Comprehensive Strategic Cooperation’ with China and increased its focus on Vietnam, one of its strategic partners in Southeast Asia.
The sudden warming of Russian-North Korean relations and the reaffirmation of the alliance in recent months has much to do with the fact that Japan and South Korea follow the United States and are close military allies, especially since they chose sides in the Russia-Ukraine war and are small followers of the United States, even actively seeking to join NATO and promote the ‘Asia-Pacificisation’ of the alliance. This creates a strategic constraint and threat to Russia from the Asia-Pacific region, particularly from the Far East. Moreover, since August 2023, the DPRK has provided Russia with a ‘certificate of loyalty’ by supplying more than 1 million artillery shells and missiles.
Drastic changes in the international environment, especially the prolongation of the Russia-Ukraine war and the crisis in Northeast Asia, which have not been fundamentally resolved and even the common rivals and enemies are still the same, will inevitably push the DPRK to show its goodwill to Russia in various ways, at the same time attracting Moscow’s ‘two-headed eagle’ to the Far East, especially to the US’s mortal enemy, North Korea. Of course, Russia and North Korea have renewed their honeymoon not only because of the unforgettable memories of the Cold War, but also because of the realistic need to deal with the risk of a hot war and to jointly reconstruct the world and regional order in accordance with their respective goals. In a way, this situation is particularly dangerous because it resembles the international strategic environment before the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the dynamics of the great power game and the internal conflicts on the Korean Peninsula.
At a time of renewed tensions on the Korean peninsula, with Russia and North Korea forming a close alliance, China launching large-scale military exercises to encircle Taiwan, and maritime police patrolling around the island for the first time, the premiere of the major television drama *’Shangganling’ on CCTV-1 on 16 October inevitably raised many associations for some observers. But this is purely coincidental. None of the world’s three major hotspots were triggered by China, nor did China play a leading role; on the contrary, China has always hoped for and advocated an immediate end to these conflicts.
History is always similar and often repeats itself, but as the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus warned, ‘you cannot bathe in the same river twice’. The relations between China and Russia have reached their best level in history, China and North Korea have renewed their friendship and mutual assistance agreements. On the other hand, China and the US have once again entered a period of serious friction and confrontation. However, unless the US invades North Korea again and threatens China’s core interests, it is impossible for China, Russia and North Korea to return to the same trenches as during the Cold War. Therefore, no matter how close relations between Russia and North Korea become, this will not lead to a return to the old path of military antagonism between China and the US and the Western camp.
The continuous broadcasting of Chinese television dramas about the Korean War and the strong conflicts and frictions that Russia and North Korea have with the United States are two different things. The fact that China has crossed a forbidden zone with its television dramas and presented a series of productions on the Korean War basically expresses the determination of the Chinese government and people to stand up against tyranny and oppression. This sends a message to American policymakers that they should not repeat the mistakes of the Korean War and return Sino-US relations to the bloody and dark past.
*Battle on Shangganling Mountain is a protracted military engagement during the Korean War, during which China fought to resist US aggression and aid Korea (1950-53).
Prof. Ma is the Dean of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies (ISMR) at Zhejiang International Studies University in Hangzhou. He specializes in international politics, particularly Islam and Middle Eastern affairs. He previously worked as a senior Xinhua correspondent in Kuwait, Palestine, and Iraq.
