North Korea-Russia arms deal destabilizes region, undercuts nonproliferation efforts

FORUM Staff

North Korean and Russian actions are undermining multinational nonproliferation efforts in the Indo-Pacific. Enhanced cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang will offer North Korea’s authoritarian regime access to intelligence, analysis and sensitive technology to accelerate its banned ballistic and nuclear weapons programs, Sue Mi Terry, a Korea expert and former Central Intelligence Agency analyst, said in an episode of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Capital Cable web series.

In a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in September 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated Russia would help the North launch reconnaissance satellites — after two failed attempts by the regime earlier in the year.

Moscow’s technical assistance allowed North Korea to put its first satellite into orbit two months later, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported, according to Yonhap News Agency. Russia’s moves defy resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, of which it is a permanent member, that ban North Korea’s missile program, including rockets that launch satellites.

Japan, South Korea and the United States have condemned the arrangement between Kim and Putin, through which North Korea receives technology help in return for munitions Russia uses to wage its unprovoked war on Ukraine.

Satellite images from late 2023 show increased shipping at a port in Najin in northeast North Korea, which U.S. officials say Pyongyang is using to transport artillery to Russia, according to CSIS’s Beyond Parallel website. Such an exchange violates a U.N. ban on arms trade with North Korea.

Russia, joined by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), has blocked recent U.N. Security Council measures to curb Pyongyang’s weapons programs — after the PRC and Russia supported 10 resolutions since 2006 sanctioning North Korea for developing nuclear weapons and related activities.

The most recent sanctions, adopted in 2017, committed the U.N. Security Council to tightening restrictions on petroleum exports if the Kim regime launched an intercontinental ballistic missile. After a spate of such missile launches, however, the PRC and Russia vetoed a 2022 resolution calling for further sanctions.

Kim is likely to act assertively given his growing relationship with Russia and his desire to divert attention from food shortages and worsening economic conditions in North Korea, Robert King, a former U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, said on Capital Cable in November 2023.

He added that although the PRC and Russia don’t want a belligerent North Korea dragging them into conflict, Putin and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping have made it clear they won’t support international calls for denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Terry said Beijing and Moscow have shown a “total unwillingness” to rein in Pyongyang’s destabilizing weapons development. “North Korea will continue to act with impunity,” she said, adding that the U.S., its Allies and Partners are focused on deterring North Korean aggression.

Seoul, Tokyo and Washington continue calling for international efforts to counter Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development, and the cyber theft and illegal arms transfers that enable it. The nations have also increased the trilateral partnership’s visibility and strengthened military exercises.

The countries’ security advisors met in South Korea in December 2023 and pledged to bolster responses to Pyongyang’s illicit missile testing and space activities with real-time information sharing beginning that month, The Associated Press reported. Australia, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. also imposed sanctions freezing foreign-held assets of North Korean agents supporting weapons of mass destruction programs.