SEOUL, South Korea — With the sun setting on the Biden administration and South Korean policymaking frozen by a presidential impeachment drama, North Korea continued to act true to form Monday.
The authoritarian state test-fired a suspected intermediate-range ballistic missile just as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was meeting for talks with his South Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, in Seoul.
Mr. Blinken is making what is almost certainly his last trip to the region as America’s top diplomat, with a stop also planned in Tokyo. The incoming Donald Trump administration — which promises major changes in tone and policy for American allies in the Indo-Pacific — will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Mr. Blinken’s lame-duck status is mirrored by the confusion and uncertainty plaguing his South Korean hosts. Mr. Cho presents a government whose leader, President Yoon Suk Yeol, has been impeached and effectively stripped of his powers following a botched attempt to declare martial law on Dec. 3.
With Seoul’s Constitutional Court yet to convene to decide Mr. Yoon’s fate, South Korean policymaking faces what looks to be months of unpredictability as a new U.S. administration takes office.
The regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which has offered derisory commentary in the official state media about the political turmoil in the South Korean “puppet state,” test-fired what experts believe was a new hypersonic missile as Mr. Blinken and Mr. Cho met.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said they detected the launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile, possibly tipped with a hypersonic warhead, from the Pyongyang area around noon on Monday.
The weapon splashed in the Sea of Japan. Hypersonic weapons, pioneered by Russia, are hard to counter by conventional missile defense systems such as those deployed in South Korea due to their high speeds and variable flight paths.
It was the first North Korean missile test since Nov. 5, the day of the U.S. presidential election. The regime previously test-launched solid-fuel, hypersonic IRBMs in January and April 2024. Those weapons are believed to have the range to strike Guam, a strategic U.S. Pacific territory.
There was no indication from North Korea that the latest missile test was designed to coincide with Mr. Blinken’s visit. But analysts say Pyongyang test-launches missiles not only to check the development status of its own weapons technologies but also to send messages to the outside world.
Against the backdrop of the launch, Mr. Blinken focused in his public remarks here on the dangers of the expanding military cooperation relationship between North Korea and Russia, highlighted by the recent deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to aid the Russian military invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Mr. Blinken said ties between the two U.S. adversaries are only deepening.
“We have reasons to believe that Moscow intends to share advanced space and satellite technology with Pyongyang,” he said in a joint press conference. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin may be close to reversing a decades-long policy by accepting [North Korea’s] nuclear weapons program.”
Details of the quid pro quo between Moscow and Pyongyang are not known, though it is widely suspected that Mr. Putin is offering the North Korean regime sophisticated military technologies, diplomatic support, food and oil, in return for munitions and combat troops.
Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim signed a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in June. One clause of their agreement calls for the defense of one party by the other if its territory is invaded by a foreign force.
While battle in Ukraine rages, South Korea’s non-response to Pyongyang’s military venture has become a source of frustration to its allies.
Ukraine badly needs fresh sources of arms and ammunition as Russian forces advance in the south and east. Prosperous South Korea is one of the world’s largest arms manufacturers and a high-technology powerhouse.
But although it has supplied artillery ammunition to the U.S. and is selling sophisticated arms such as armored vehicles and artillery systems to NATO nations including Poland, Norway and Turkey, it has not sent a single bullet to Kyiv.
One Western diplomat told The Washington Times that he and colleagues were “fanning the flames” in talks with their South Korean partners to do more. Another said that there had been “forceful” discussions on the matter.
It would require a change in South Korean law to arm a nation actively engaged in war. But diplomats say there is still much that Seoul could do to assist Ukraine.
No such frustrations were aired before the media cameras in Seoul Monday. Mr. Cho insisted that, regardless of political developments in Seoul and Washington, the bilateral alliance will be unshaken.
“We will continue to move forward by closely coordinating all policy actions in solidarity, even after the Trump administration takes office,” he said.
Mr. Blinken said that the U.S. had “complete confidence” in South Korean acting President Choi Sang-mook.
The stance of the incoming Trump administration toward Seoul, however, is far from clear.
In his first term as U.S. president, Mr. Trump alarmed some in Seoul with his demands for increased payments for U.S. troops stationed on the tense, divided peninsula, and flustered Seoul with his personal diplomatic outreach and apparently chummy attitude toward North Korea’s Mr. Kim.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.