Will North Korea take advantage of Israel-Hamas conflict?

A senior Hamas official has claimed that North Korea could attack the US over the war in Gaza amid speculation that Pyongyang is supplying the terrorist organisation with weapons.

"The leader of North Korea is, perhaps, the only one in the world capable of striking the United States," Ali Baraka said, during an interview with Lebanese YouTube channel Spot Shot, according to reports from the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute. "The day may come when North Korea intervenes because it is, after all, part of [our] alliance."

Hamas allegedly used North Korean weapons in its attacks on Israel, "a fact later confirmed by the Israeli military", said Radio Free Asia (RFA). South Korea's military has said that, based on photos and videos of the 7 October massacre, Hamas appeared to be using various North Korean weapons. Pyongyang denies the allegations.

"We are closely watching the situation in the Middle East," said South Korea's foreign minister Park Jin this week. The crisis "can be relevant to the security situation on the Korean peninsula". If the alleged connection between Hamas and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) is confirmed, the North "should be condemned accordingly".

What did the commentators say?

Steering North Korea through extreme isolation to counter Covid while "defying tough international sanctions", supreme leader Kim Jong Un has "emerged into the warm embrace of Moscow and Beijing", said Christian Davies, Seoul bureau chief for the Financial Times, "amid intensifying geopolitical tensions in the region".

Kim visited Russia in September, his first foreign trip since 2019, meeting Putin in Siberia and inspecting military factories and missile systems. The visit "consummated a relationship that has flourished in the wake of the Russian president's full-scale invasion of Ukraine", said Davies, "illustrating how a fragmenting international order has benefited a country under sanctions from nearly a dozen UN security council resolutions since its first nuclear test in 2006".

Pyongyang is now using the conflict in Gaza to condemn the US, David Maxwell, from the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, told RFA. From North Korea's perspective, it is "part of its normal blackmail diplomacy".

Meanwhile, military cooperation between Kim and Putin is "growing and dangerous", said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his South Korean counterpart Park Jin after a meeting in Seoul this week.

Blinken also met South Korea's national security adviser, Cho Tae-yong, and condemned "provocative actions" by North Korea such as sending munitions and other supplies to Russia, according to VOA.

North Korea and Russia have denied any arms deals, though Reuters notes that their leaders pledged closer military cooperation when they met in September.

South Korea's intelligence agency believes that the North has "already dispatched military advisers and more than a million artillery shells to Russia", according to The Times's Asia editor Richard Lloyd Parry. The National Intelligence Service told South Korean MPs that Pyongyang is "mobilising extra workers in its munitions factories and has increased production to meet Russian demand".

Kim also ordered his officials to support Palestinians, reported The Wall Street Journal last week, and North Korea has sold anti-tank rocket launchers to Hamas in the past. There is "a possibility Pyongyang will attempt to export more weapons amid the war in Gaza".

But North Korea attacking the US over the war in Gaza is "very unlikely", experts told RFA. "I don't take these comments very seriously because Kim Jong Un is not going to risk his own neck to help Hamas," said Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Kim's "modus operandi is to intimidate adversaries by cultivating a reputation for unpredictability and belligerence", said The Diplomat. In practice, his government "appears rather risk-averse".

What next?

The US, Japan and South Korea have recently established "a high-level consultative body designed to counter North Korea's cyber activities", to prevent attacks "used to fund North Korea's weapons development", said Infosecurity magazine.

While Pyongyang has "little interest" in Hamas' agenda, "it also has few inhibitions about helping enemies of its adversaries should there be something in it for the Kim regime", Patrick M. Cronin, from the Hudson Institute, told RFA.

"America and our allies need to be vigilant about possible technology transfer, about opportunistic provocations in multiple regions, and about ensuring our allies know they have our full support," he said. But those countries "also need to find diplomatic opportunities to weaken the natural seams between the members of an axis of evil before it coalesces further".