The Grim Endgame of Putin and Kim Jong Un’s New Lovefest

SEOUL—Kim Jong Un got the treatment worthy of a head of state in an unusual setting—a tour as Vladimir Putin’s guest at the Vostochny Cosmodrome east of Russia’s Amur River from which the Russians have been launching rockets into space since 2016.

The personal tour on Wednesday, followed by a sumptuous state dinner, may signal that the Russians are willing to provide Kim’s regime with the technology needed to fulfill his dream of putting satellites into orbit as a reward for supplying Russian forces with much needed artillery shells. North Korea was also expected to sell the Russians a wide range of other infantry and artillery equipment from its stockpiles as well as brand new stuff being produced in factories hidden around the country.

“The agreement involves much more than shells,” said Yoon Eui-chul, a retired South Korean army lieutenant general attending a conference at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul. He said the North Koreans could sell Russia not only the shells it urgently needs but also other weaponry for lower prices than it costs to make them in Russia.

For the North Koreans, the deal comes with oil and food that’s badly needed for a poverty-stricken population beyond the elite of the ruling party, the government, and the armed forces, many of whose 1,200,000 troops are also underfed. North Korea counts on China for most of its oil and half its food, but “they don’t want to be totally dependent on the Chinese,” according to Phillip Saunders, China expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “They like to play one against the other,” he told The Daily Beast.

The reception at the Vostochny Сosmodrome dramatized Putin’s eagerness to cooperate totally with Kim on technology that the Russians were reluctant to give him when they met more than four years ago at the port city of Vladivostok, 930 miles to the south. “Now they need artillery shells and they’re willing to give what he wants,” said Saunders.

The choice of the cosmodrome for the summit “was about optics,” said Justin Anderson, a senior fellow at the National Defense University. “They could have met in Vladivostok, but Putin, by inviting Kim to the cosmodrome, showed he would give him the technology for space.”

Kim, for his part, showed he was all in on the Russians in Ukraine, heaping superlatives on Russia’s “sacred fight to protect its state sovereignty and security while combating hegemonic forces,” supporting without qualification “every decision that President Putin or the Russian government makes.”

The lovefest at the Cosmodrome climaxed a long history of Russian support for North Korea going back to the division of the Korean peninsula between the Soviet North and the American South after the Japanese surrender in August 1945 and then to Russian support for North Korea in the Korean War.

“In practice, North Korea and Russia have already been cooperating in many ways for many years,” Bruce Bennett, long-time Korea analyst at the Rand Corporation, told The Daily Beast. Russia, then under Soviet rule, “provided fighter aircraft and pilots to assist North Korea during the Korean War, provided economic assistance and even a nuclear experimental reactor to North Korea in the 1960s, and provided highly enriched uranium for that reactor through the 1980s.”

Indeed, Bennett said, “North Korean ballistic missiles were initially versions of the Soviet/Russian ballistic missile, including Scuds, and have evolved from them.”

The difference now is that “all those cases involved North Korea seeking Russian assistance,” he said. “This time, Russia is seeking North Korean assistance with conventional munitions that it needs for the conflict in Ukraine” in return for which North Korea “ will inevitably demand substantial Russian compensation.”

It’s “because Russia is now the one seeking assistance,” added Bennett, that it’s “far more prepared to provide North Korea with things like nuclear submarine design, nuclear weapon design, satellite technology, and other technology that Kim very much wants,” Among other things, Russia may provide North Korea with “ nuclear weapon miniaturization technology” that North Korea needs in order to place nukes on the tips of missiles that it’s capable of firing as far as the United States.

The Russians in recent weeks have sent military delegations to Pyongyang, and the Russian defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, joined them in a look at North Korean military equipment on display in celebrations marking the 70th anniversary in July of what the North Koreans always call their “victory” in the Korean War. In effect, it seems, the Russians were window-shopping for a raft of military equipment, not just artillery shells.

Getting in the Way

Bruce Klingner, long-time Northeast Asia analyst at the Heritage Foundation, criticized the Biden administration for what he called “its lackadaisical enforcement of U.S. and UN sanctions” that theoretically ban Russia and North Korea from any dealings and called on “the international community to target North Korean violators as well as Russian, Chinese, and other nations’ entities facilitating Pyongyang’s transgressions.”

“Russia’s need for foreign ammunition suppliers, despite its own extensive weapons and ammunition production capability, reflects desperation to replenish depleted reserves due to high expenditure rate of ammunition in Ukraine as well as how global sanctions have severely restricted Moscow’s supply chains,” he told The Daily Beast. “Any North Korean—Russian military support to each other would violate numerous UN Security Council resolutions.”

North Korea “is suffering economically from years of self-imposed draconian COVID restrictions on trade, international sanctions, and decades of failed socialist economies,” said Klingner. “The regime would therefore be very eager for any economic benefits from Moscow.”

For sure, however, any deal between Russia and North Korea would run afoul of UN sanctions, some of which Russia agreed on long before Putin decided to invade Ukraine.

“A successful North Korean-Russian arms deal would enable continued Russian aggression against Ukraine,” Klingner said, while “Russian military technology could enable North Korea to further refine its rapidly growing missile and conventional weapons force.”

The upshot: “Doing so would augment the increasing North Korean military threat to U.S. allies South Korea and Japan.”

Evans Revere, a former senior diplomat at American embassies in Seoul and Tokyo, agreed. “Both the Chinese and the Russians have set aside their earlier opposition to the DPRK's nuclear and missile programs,” he told The Daily Beast, referring to the North by the acronym for its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

For its part, “North Korea is eager to maximize Russian and Chinese support for its faltering economy,” said Revere, “So Pyongyang is bending over backwards to be seen as a good partner and ally to Russia and China.”

The logic, Revere summarized, is irresistible.

Little Sister Takes Charge as Kim Jong Un Morphs Into Vegas-Era Elvis Presley

“North Korean armed forces use the same type of basic artillery shells as the Russians,” Revere noted. “Pyongyang is well situated to draw down its massive stockpile of artillery shells and get its production facilities running at a higher tempo. Pyongyang also seeks Russian technology and assistance to advance its ballistic missile program. Some of its missile systems are based on Soviet-era technology, so reaching out to Russia for assistance is a natural move for the North Koreans.”

“At a minimum,” he said, “I expect the Russians will offer grain and fuel to Pyongyang in return for its artillery shells.” And, he said, “They may also take in more North Korean laborers, giving the DPRK a chance to earn much-needed foreign exchange.”

If Moscow “also decides to provide concrete support for the DPRK's missile and/or nuclear programs,” Revere warned, “that will be a deeply troubling challenge, and the United States will need to find a way to respond.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get the Daily Beast's biggest scoops and scandals delivered right to your inbox. Sign up now.

Stay informed and gain unlimited access to the Daily Beast's unmatched reporting. Subscribe now.