Russia warns US, South Korea and Japan against forming security alliance targeting North Korea
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov flew to North Korea's eastern Wonsan city on Friday for a meeting with his North Korean counterpart Choe Son Hui.
Relations between Russia and North Korea have been flourishing in recent years, with North Korea supplying troops and ammunitions to support Russia's war against Ukraine in return for military and economic assistance.
That has raised concerns among South Korea, the US and others that Russia might also transfer to North Korea sensitive technologies that can increase the danger of its nuclear and missile programmes.
After a meeting with Choe on Saturday, Lavrov accused the US, South Korea and Japan of what he called their military buildups around North Korea.
'We warn against exploiting these ties to build alliances directed against anyone, including North Korea and, of course, Russia,' he told reporters, according to Russia's state Tass news agency.
The US, South Korea and Japan have been expanding or restoring their trilateral military exercises in response to North Korea's advancing nuclear programme.
On Friday, the three countries held a joint air drill involving US nuclear-capable bombers near the Korean Peninsula, as their top military officers met in Seoul and urged North Korea to cease all unlawful activities that threaten regional security.
North Korea views major US-led military drills as invasion rehearsals. It has long argued that it's forced to develop nuclear weapons to defend itself from US military threats.
Lavrov said Russia understands North Korea's decision to seek nuclear weapons.
'The technologies used by North Korea are the result of the work of its own scientists. We respect North Korea's aspirations and understand the reasons why it is pursuing a nuclear development,' Lavrov said.
During their meeting, Choe reiterated that North Korea 'unconditionally' supports Russia's fight against Ukraine. She described ties between North Korea and Russia as 'the invincible alliance'.
Lavrov said he repeated Russia's gratitude for the contribution that North Korean troops made in efforts to repel a Ukrainian incursion into Russia's Kursk border region.
Wonsan city, the meeting venue, is where North Korea recently opened a mammoth beach resort that it says can accommodate nearly 20,000 people.
In his comments at the start of his meeting with Choe, Lavrov said that 'I am sure that Russian tourists will be increasingly eager to come here. We will do everything we can to facilitate this, creating conditions for this, including air travel,' according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The Wonsan-Kalma tourist zone is at the center of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's push to boost tourism as a way to improve his country's troubled economy.
But prospects for the biggest tourist complex in North Korea are not clear, as the country appears unlikely to fully reopen its borders and embrace Western tourists anytime soon.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
an hour ago
- CNA
Commentary: China's Yellow Sea moves put South Korea's new president in a tight spot
BUSAN: Since 2018, China has installed several marine structures in overlapping South Korean-Chinese waters in the Yellow Sea. There are now three of them, which Beijing refers to as 'deep-sea fishery aquaculture facilities'. This has been a point of contention between the two governments, but the issue has risen in South Korean public awareness after Chinese coast guard ships and civilian boats forced away a South Korean research vessel sent to investigate these structures in February. This led to a two-hour standoff, during which the South Korean coast guard was also deployed. China has rejected requests from South Korea to relocate the structures outside of the shared area and in May unilaterally declared 'no-sail zones' within the area, according to a report by Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. The situation creates a tough dilemma for South Korea, especially its new progressive president, Lee Jae-myung. Unlike his conservative predecessor, Mr Lee wants to pivot away from a United States-aligned hawkishness on China and pursue a more transactional relationship which does not tie South Korea into a camp in the emerging Sino-US cold war. But that would almost certainly require appeasement of China – such as tolerating these Yellow Sea encroachments. PARALLELS WITH SOUTH CHINA SEA China's moves in the Yellow Sea parallel its behaviour in the South China Sea. There, for decades, China has steadily encroached on the maritime claims of the littoral states, most particularly Vietnam and the Philippines. China has justified these expansions via an ostensibly historical claim to the South China Sea – the nine-dash line. Such claims are highly contestable, of course. Almost every nation can put forward historically based claims to adjacent but disputed territory. Indeed, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was promulgated precisely to adjudicate these sorts of irreconcilable assertions. And an UNCLOS arbitration panel ruled unanimously against the nine-dash line in 2016. China has ignored that ruling and continued to assert its position by reclaiming land, building artificial islands, and ramping up its air and naval facilities and patrols. To avoid the open perception of military expansion however, Chinese civilian fleets – fishing boats and the coast guard – have led this territorial creep. The military only shows up later, after other claimants have effectively given up trying to stop the Chinese takeover. Strategic theory calls this 'grey zone tactics' - craftily changing facts on the ground (and water) without the explicit use of force. China's opponents then struggle to find an appropriate response. For example, the US is a security partner to both the Philippines and Vietnam, but America is unlikely to risk war with China over low stakes like coast guard vessels circling sand bars. GREY ZONE TACTICS IN THE YELLOW SEA China's steady gains in the South China Sea have likely encouraged it to try the same strategy in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. Pushing into the East China Sea has been hard. Japan has the resources and naval capabilities, which the Philippines and Vietnam lack, to push back on Chinese maritime expansion. But the Yellow Sea is a better domain for China. Its North Korean ally is one the relevant littoral states, and it will do nothing to deter China. South Korea, the other relevant party, has a capable but small navy. Most of South Korean defence spending goes into land power. Although South Korea has a long coast, the North Koreans have built such a massive army – 1.5 million men – and stationed it so close to South Korea's capital, that South Korea spends disproportionately on its army and air force to outgun the North Korean threat. The South, for example, recently considered building an aircraft carrier to challenge China's maritime expansion, but the national legislature rejected it as too expensive. At present, South Korea mostly relies on US naval power for maritime security. This arrangement has been feasible in the past, but the Chinese navy is expanding rapidly. The US is unlikely to risk war with China over indeterminate structures in the East China Sea - just as it has been reticent to help the Philippines directly over low stakes like shoals and coral reefs. TRICKY FOR SOUTH KOREA'S NEW PRESIDENT All this puts South Korea's president in a tight spot. South Korean progressives have a long foreign policy tradition of anti-Americanism and downplaying North Korean totalitarianism to facilitate detente. More broadly, this has led to equivocation on Russia and China, and a reticence to admit that China, Russia and North Korea cooperate. Mr Lee, for example, has blamed Ukraine for its invasion by Russian and said South Korea should not help Taiwan if China attacks it. This nationalist-minded foreign policy is attractive for the independence it promises from American 'domination'. But it also means that South Korea must stand on its own if North Korea, China and Russia bully it. The South Korean public opinion senses this. The public strongly supports the US alliance and has become increasingly anti-Chinese. According to a survey by JoongAng Ilbo and the East Asia Institute in June, 66.3 per cent of respondents said they held an unfavourable view of China. This is up from 63.8 per cent in a similar survey last August. If Mr Lee is seen as folding before Chinese pressure in the Yellow Sea, the public backlash will be sharp. On the other hand, if Mr Lee falls back on alignment with the US to push back China, the price will be greater South Korean cooperation on Taiwan, the East and South China Seas, Ukraine, and so on. This choice was easy for Mr Lee's conservative predecessor. For Mr Lee, it is likely to lead to a sharp foreign policy fight inside his left-progressive coalition.
CNA
6 hours ago
- CNA
Russia and China discuss Ukraine war and ties with the United States
MOSCOW: Russia and China's foreign ministers on Sunday discussed their relations with the United States and the prospects for ending the war in Ukraine, Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement. President Vladimir Putin's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in Beijing on Sunday (Jun 13). Lavrov is due to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) foreign ministers in China. "The parties also discussed relations with the United States and prospects for resolving the Ukrainian crisis," the foreign ministry said. "The importance of strengthening close coordination between the two countries in the international arena, including in the United Nations and its Security Council, the SCO, BRICS, the G20 and APEC, was emphasized," the ministry said. China and Russia declared a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing, days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine. Putin has sometimes described China as an "ally".
CNA
8 hours ago
- CNA
EU wants to see China taking more ambitious climate action
BEIJING: The world needs China to show more leadership on climate action, EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said on Sunday (Jul 13), highlighting the importance of cutting planet-heating emissions and reducing the Chinese economy's reliance on coal. Hoekstra is in Beijing for high-level talks with Chinese officials on environmental and climate issues at which he also wants to encourage China to stop building new coal-fired power plants and phase out use of the fossil fuel. "We do encourage China to take more of a leadership role going forward and really hit the road with meaningful emission reductions in the next couple of years, and also move out of the domain of coal," Hoekstra told Reuters in an interview. The number of coal power plants in the pipeline has been increasing in China - the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, according to the World Economic Forum. In the first three months this year, China's approved 11.29 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power plants exceeded the approval rate in the first half of 2024, a June report by environmental group Greenpeace showed. Last week, Hoekstra told the Financial Times the EU was holding off on signing a joint climate declaration with China unless Beijing pledges a greater commitment to reduce emissions. "We are open to looking into a potential declaration, but ... the thing that is most important about these types of statements is the content that goes into it," he said when asked about the issue, without specifying what commitment the EU hopes to see from China.
