Putin Shocks the World With Defense Treaty with Pariah Kim

Pact significantly raises tensions across Asia

By: Shim Jae Hoon

Driving to perdition

Even as the Ukraine invasion he launched more than two years ago is still burning, Russian dictator Vladimir V. Putin has sent a new shockwave across the world by signing a mutual defense treaty with the dictator Kim Jong Un, setting forth Moscow’s readiness to come to North Korea’s defense if another war were to break out on the divided Korean peninsula. If South Korea retaliates by sending weapons to Ukraine, as some analysts have speculated, Putin warned, Seoul would be making “a very big mistake,” while claiming Seoul has “nothing to worry about” concerning the new pact.

Certainly, Seoul's relations with Moscow have dramatically worsened following the signing of the mutual defense treaty, with the foreign ministry summoning Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev in Seoul for protest. Being told that Russia  should "act responsibly," Zinoviev responded that the agreement was not aimed at a third party. At the same time, South Korean foreign minister Cho Tae Yul, speaking on the phone with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, condemned the treaty as a serious threat to regional peace and stability, according to Reuters. Blinken said the US supports South Korea's responses to security threats. Cho also spoke on the phone with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa who expressed grave concern over the treaty.

At the same time, South Korea's presidential security advisor Chang Ho Jin said Seoul would review the possibility of supplying weapons to Ukraine in response to Russian action despite Putin’s warning, a clear indication that a policy review is afoot. 

The treaty raises the specter of nuclear war in Northeast Asia as the Kim Jong Un regime, armed with a stock of rudimentary nuclear bombs probably running to two dozen, keeps tensions high by threatening to obliterate the South in the next conflict. Kim recently declared the North was in a state of suspended war, not a complete peace, and rejected the notion of peaceful coexistence.

Officially called a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty, the 22-article agreement sets forth extensive cooperation between the two nations in all areas of scientific, economic, and cultural exchanges. But the most important article, the fourth, states that Moscow will “without delay” come to the aid of the Kim regime in the event of an attack by a third party. The Kim regime, which already has conducted six rounds of underground nuclear tests, is committed to further develop nuclear-tipped warheads that can be fitted on ICBMs that can reach US targets. The treaty, as it is, opens the way for Russia to help advance North Korea’s nuclear weapons system, which is poised against South Korea, Japan, and the US. Depending on what help Russia provides, North Korea’s nuclear capability could turn into a massive global threat.

Within hours of Putin’s departure on his June 19 state visit, his first to Pyongyang in 24 years, Kim proudly released the full text of the treaty in a move clearly intended to alarm Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington. According to Article Four, Russia is obliged to come to the aid of North Korea in case of a war and vice versa. In its concept, the treaty revived the 1961 accord that provided an automatic involvement of the Soviet Union in case of war on the Korean peninsula. That treaty was replaced with a new one emphasizing amity rather than war after the collapse of the Soviet system in the year 2000. Putin is now taking the treaty back to the Cold War era East-West confrontation by promising armed intervention.

The 22-article treaty covers the whole gamut of bilateral cooperation including in science, culture and information technology, climate change, cooperation in agriculture and industrial areas. Some of these economic clauses appear designed for North Korea to send tens of thousands of guest workers to Russia in attempt to earn foreign exchange. More than 10,000 North Koreans are already scattered across the vast expanse of Russian territory, with their earnings keeping families back home from starving.

But the most critical area of concern lies in the possibility of Russia providing high-level missile and nuclear technology with the effect of boosting North Korea’s already significant armament arms capability. At his previous summit with Putin in the Russian Far East last September, Kim reportedly submitted a list of arms acquisitions in five categories including spy satellites, nuclear submarines, longer range ballistic missiles, and more modern fighter jets.

In exchange for these high-end super-modern arms, Kim was already shipping tens of millions of conventional artillery shells, drones, and other traditional arms to the Ukrainian front.

The possibility of North Korea gaining access to advanced satellite and missile systems has alarmed the US, Japan, and even NATO member countries, already gripped in tensions over the Ukraine War. In Washington, the Biden administration has issued stern warnings to Russia that providing this advanced weaponry would result in increasing global tensions at a time of war in Europe. It has also alarmed NATO.

South Korea, taken aback by the development, is in a special quandary. Hours before Putin’s departure for Asia, a top security adviser for South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol issued a circuitous warning to Russia “not to cross the line” by signing such an agreement. Seoul has maintained a cautious stance on Russia over the years, abstaining from publicly denouncing the Russian war in Ukraine, even dispatching a special envoy to congratulate Putin at his fifth presidential inauguration. Throughout Putin’s 24-year reign, Seoul has maintained brisk trade and investment, even extending a government loan to post-Soviet Russia.

Now the table is turned. News of the defense treaty, laying the Yoon administration open to criticisms of naivete, is prompting Seoul to undertake a wholesale reevaluation of its Russian policy. One immediate result is the reappraisal of its cautious stance on the Ukraine War. The Yoon government is coming under pressure to provide arms aid to the Zelenskyy government to match Putin’s aid to North Korea. Ukraine thus looks like becoming a battleground for a proxy war between North and South Korean weapons. Already, the Yoon government is coming under pressure to send more artillery shells to the US to help replenish drained US ammunition stocks. Now Seoul is coming under pressure, both at home and from allies, to consider sending arms aid to Ukraine.

Even as North Korea is already a massive source of millions of artillery shells to Russian troops in Ukraine, South Korea has the potential of emerging as an even bigger source of help if a political decision is made. South Korea not only has a vast stock of conventional weapons, but it is also capable of producing a vast array of medium-level arms such as tanks, long-range howitzers, missiles, rockets, and fighter jets. South Korea’s exports of midlevel arms to Europe and Southeast Asia today makes it one of major arms producers and exporters in the world. Countries surrounding Russia such as Poland and Hungary are already major importers of South Korean weapon systems. Some of South Korea’s big-name munitions companies are already setting up shops in Poland and elsewhere.

With Kim bragging about his new treaty “virtual (military) alliance,” the conservative Yoon government is coming under growing pressure at home to revise its cautious policy on arms exports to help Ukraine, especially from Japan, whose officials fear Putin’s treaty with North Korea makes the Kim regime a “virtual arms depot” for Moscow. The Kishida government, in the face of North Korea’s continuing satellite test firings over the Sea of Japan, has been expanding its own military power, with a defense budget in excess of the traditional freezing point of 1 percent of GDP. The prospect of Kim spurring modernization of his nuclear efforts with Russian help will add fuel to the fire of debate on Japan’s rearmament through constitutional amendment.

Russia’s alliance with North Korea also complicates China’s position, caught in the process of expanding and modernizing its economy through wider cooperation with Japan and South Korea. This quandary showed vividly in its lukewarm response to the Russian initiative. Responding to the news, Chinese officials in Beijing responded with a short lukewarm comment that it constituted a “bilateral matter of the two countries, Russia and North Korea.” But underneath that seemingly offhanded response, China’s deputy foreign minister and a People’s Liberation Army general were in Seoul for regular two-plus-two consultations with South Korean counterparts to talk about mutual security and foreign policy issues. In Seoul, they were already uncomfortable witness to wide-ranging calls to send weapons to Ukraine and having NATO get more concerned with the implications of Russia’s action.