North Korea sends foreign minister to Russia amid tensions with Seoul

North Korea has sent its foreign minister, Choi Song-hee, to Russia, her second trip to a key ally of Kim Jong-un’s regime in less than a year. The move comes as Pyongyang prepares for a parliamentary session that is likely to pass measures that will increase tensions with South Korea. Bloomberg writes about this, reports UNN.

Details

According to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Choi Song-hee led a delegation to attend conferences on women’s rights. It is the foreign secretary’s first trip abroad since January, when she visited Moscow and held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which the US and its partners say facilitated the supply of weapons from North Korea to support the Kremlin’s offensive against Ukraine.

The visit comes after Russia sent Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu to Pyongyang last week for talks with Kim Jong Un. It was Shoigu’s second trip to North Korea in just over a year. As Russia’s defense minister, Shoigu met with Kim in July 2023 and was given a tour of the latest North Korean weapons, including ballistic missiles that Ukraine and other countries said later entered the battlefield.

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The exchange of high-ranking delegations signals deepening cooperation between the neighbors, which have grown closer due to the isolation of Putin and Kim by leading democracies. The US and South Korea accuse Kim of sending millions of artillery shells and dozens of ballistic missiles to Putin in exchange for aid to support the North’s economy and develop its weapons.

The head of Ukrainian military intelligence noted that the supply of North Korean ammunition to Moscow poses serious problems for the defense of his country, as Russia continues a full-scale invasion for the third year in a row.

Russia’s support coincided with Kim’s tougher stance toward Seoul and Washington. This includes statements of intent to exclude the concept of peaceful reunification from the constitution, assertions of rights to a disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea, and claims of the right to destroy one’s neighbor on a divided peninsula.

Addition

North Korea’s parliament, known as the Supreme People’s Assembly, will convene on October 7, KCNA reported. The meeting is expected to formalize changes to the constitution, after Kim called for a “peaceful reunification” with South Korea to be ruled out at a previous session in January.

Kim also sought to clearly delineate borders, including the Northern Limit Line (NLL), which was unilaterally established by US-led forces after the Korean War. The waters around the line have been the site of clashes, including an incident in 2010 when South Korea said North Korea torpedoed one of its warships south of the line, killing 46 sailors.

The area around the islands in the Yellow Sea is one of the few places where armed conflict has taken place between the two Koreas since the end of the 1950-1953 war, raising fears of a possible exchange of fire that could quickly escalate.

North Korea may also consider a nuclear test closer to the time of the US presidential election to raise its profile, a senior South Korean official said in July, as Kim deploys new warheads capable of hitting the US and its allies in Asia.

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