North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has arrived in Russia for a summit with President Vladimir Putin that could enhance North Korea’s ability to attack the United States or its allies.
"Naturally, being neighbors, our countries cooperate in certain sensitive spheres which should not be publicly revealed or announced,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.
Kim, who rode by armored train for his first trip out of North Korea since 2019, had an initial meeting Tuesday with Russia’s natural resources minister. Yet his summit with Putin is the main affair, with the North Korean leader expected to offer vast stockpiles of Soviet-era ammunition to sustain Russia's war in Ukraine in exchange for Russian support in upgrading North Korea’s military, potentially including technology that Kim may need to fulfill his nuclear arsenal ambitions.
“Two pieces of technology that we believe they seek is miniaturization of nuclear warheads and reentry technology for their [intercontinental ballistic missiles],” Senior Fellow David Maxwell at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told the Washington Examiner. “If they don't have them, this could be Kim's opportunity to try to really extort them from Russia to further advance North Korean nuclear and missile capabilities. That would be a direct threat to the United States.”
Any such exchange would violate United Nations Security Council resolutions that Russia endorsed as a permanent member of the Security Council.
"In building our relations with our neighbors, including North Korea, the important thing for us is the interests of our two countries, not Washington's warnings," Peskov said.
Kim and Putin’s expanding relationship has already stirred unease in South Korea, the democratic U.S. ally that has been in an uneasy armistice with its northern neighbor for 70 years.
"Our government has been understanding the overall situation well, independently and in cooperation with our allies and partner nations, and making full preparations," an unnamed aide to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol told reporters, according to Yonhap. "Many countries are watching the summit between North Korea, which is under U.N. sanctions, and Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, with a bit of concern for various reasons, but as the president has stated, we hope Russia will act responsibly as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.”
Dissident Russians and Western governments have portrayed Putin’s appeal for military supplies from the likes of North Korea and Iran as a sign of weakness.
“If they are looking for weaponry in North Korea, one of the poorest and less developed countries of the world — an isolated country — to my mind that is the utmost humiliation of the propaganda of Russian 'great power,’” former Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev, who held that post in Boris Yeltsin’s first term as president, told the BBC. “A great power would not go to North Korea for an alliance or military supplies.”
The visit comes on the heels of a historic summit at Camp David last month, when President Joe Biden hosted his South Korean counterpart as well as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
"We are watching the situation with concern, including its impact on Russia's war in Ukraine," Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said of the Kim-Putin meeting. “In any case, Japan will continue to collect and analyze relevant information.”
The Japanese leader has been outspoken about his fear that Kim will follow Putin’s example in using the threat of nuclear war to deter the United States from intervening to halt a North Korean attack against one of its neighbors.
“The summit’s deliverables might include an arms deal, but Russia and North Korea won’t make public the full details of their cooperation because of the serious international legal violations involved,” Ewha University professor Leif-Eric Easley told the Japan Times. “Putin is unlikely to provide Kim with technology to miniaturize nuclear devices or propel nuclear-powered submarines because even a desperate war machine does not trade its military crown jewels for old, dumb munitions.”
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Kremlin officials have declined to provide details on the itinerary of Putin’s meeting with Kim, but Putin attended the Eastern Economic Forum on Tuesday in Vladivostok — a port city in Russia’s far southeastern region, near the border with North Korea. His expected visit to Vostochny Cosmodrome raises the possibility that he will host Kim at the spaceport, just weeks after North Korea’s latest botched attempt to put a spy satellite into orbit.
“They are really appearing to want to develop satellite imagery for targeting,” Maxwell, the FDD senior fellow, said. “So they're likely to ask Russia for support, intelligence-wise, [for] imagery and things like that.”