North Korea-Russia summit is about economy

By Choo Jae-woo

An ordinary China and North Korea observer would naturally have an urge to ask one very simple question about the North's leader Kim Jong-un's decision to visit Russia for a summit rather than China. It was Kim's first overseas travel since the opening of his country this year after a long closure due to COVID-19.

Conventional wisdom would tell us his first overseas summit would have been in Beijing considering the diplomatic successes Kim had with his Chinese counterpart in 2018 and 2019 just before the arrival of the pandemic. Kim had visited China four times during the period. The last time the two countries had a summit was in Pyongyang in June 2019.

By the order of diplomatic reciprocity protocol, it would be Kim's turn to visit Beijing. Instead, Kim picked Russia as his first post-pandemic foreign destination and Russian President Vladimir Putin as the first leader to engage with.

Then a set of questions naturally evokes intellectual curiosities. Why snub China and Xi? What was Kim's motive? What can he gain? The same questions can apply to Putin. What drove him to travel more than 3,700 miles in the midst of a war and greet Kim in the Russian Far East? Putin could have sent his next man like his premier Medvedev. What was there for Putin to gain from meeting with Kim? Motives and benefits for their summit deserve scrutiny due to the leaders' unconventional act of diplomacy.

The answer to the first question may come from a legitimate argument that Beijing is very much strained by U.S. pressure. Since U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's meeting with Wang Yi, then the Chinese state councilor and director of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Foreign Affairs Office, on the margins of the Munich Security Conference in February this year, the U.S. has been persistent with one message to China. The message was a stern warning to China to not send weapons to Russia and to rein in North Korea for the same alleged reasons.

America's warnings continued to flash at the following high-level meetings. American national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Blinken once again would deliver the same warnings to Wang Yi in May, and June, respectively. Their reasoning was that China's provision of material support or assistance to Russia was an act of systemic sanction evasion. The same logic was deemed applicable to the North Korean case, Blinken argued, as such allegations continue to develop since last February.

Beijing, meanwhile, seemed to have taken America's message seriously. Its actions have spoken volumes. Two occasions attested Beijing's strategic priority. It was either to improve relations with Washington for its economy that has been in shambles since the opening of the country last March, or to keep on going with the brotherhood with Pyongyang. It chose the former, and the consequences were successive high-level American officials' visits to Beijing that included the secretaries of state, treasury and commerce. Although China accepted North Korea's invitation to attend its national ceremonies like the Korean War "Victory Day" in July and the Workers' Party's Foundation Day in September, it responded by dispatching unprecedentedly low-ranking party officials.

For the North's victory day ceremony, Li Hongzhong, who ranked No. 24 in the CCP, was sent. Liu Guozhong attended the North Korean Workers' Party's foundation day ceremony. Although Liu's official title was vice premier, however, his power ranking in the CCP was beyond No. 25, meaning that he was not a party politburo member. In September 2010, for instance, when China sent Zhou Yongkang to attend the July event for the first time, he was the No. 9 man in the party. For the July occasion, the No. 8 man in the party, Li Yuanchao, was in attendance. When Pyongyang was celebrating the nation's 70th birthday, No. 3 Li Zhanshu honored the occasion. Party ranking matters on historically meaningful days for both countries because their bilateral relationship is dictated by the party. They are both party-state nations. No one is above the party. Hence, party-to-party relations precede state relations. For China to downgrade the envoy to North Korea to those second to last in the politburo standing as in Li Hongzhong, and even those outside the politburo is telling of the current standing of the bilateral relations. Beijing embraces Washington while unhappy about the allegations of Pyongyang's military activities with Russia.

Against this background, North Korea is in no position to expect economic aid or assistance from China. It is in dire need of food, energy and other economic supplies to recuperate from its economic losses inflicted by the pandemic. However, it seems as though Beijing is not ready to extend Pyongyang's needs. It is also desperately seeking a breakthrough for its dire economic difficulties, and the answer seems to lie in the hands of the U.S. As such, Pyongyang for now becomes expendable to Beijing.

Pyongyang's outreach to Moscow was prompted by economic reasons. Moscow was driven to secure Pyongyang's supply of ammunition and artillery shells. To produce them, North Korea must be able to run the factories and they can only be efficient when sufficient energy is fueled and the workers are well fed. Thus, no more or no less meaning should be given to the meaning of their summit. It is for this strategic interest that they were compelled to embrace each other. China is not the weak link in the trilateral relations. It is preoccupied with its own problem of feeding 1.4 billion people. The prospects for the three nations joining together against Korea-U.S.-Japan trilateral defense relations are zero to none. It would be a disgrace and loss of face for North Korea should it participate in trilateral military drills due to the absence of vessels and aircraft that can effectively level the playing field of these exercises.

It is true that Kim visited the Vostochny Cosmodrome space center and jet-fighter assembly workshops in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, which might have been too enticing to his ever-insatiable appetite for sophisticated weapons. The real agenda of the summit was the attendance of Russia's Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Transportation, and Ministry of Natural Resources. The revitalization of economic cooperation and humanitarian issues of food and energy resources was the focus of the summit. It would quickly serve North Korea's strategic interests as well as Russia's in a feasible, effective and sufficient way. In the meantime, however, the possibility that the North's much-needed high-end Russian military technologies, equipment and parts can go undercover in the shipments of other goods. The world will have to be on alert.

Choo Jae-woo (jwc@khu.ac.kr) is a professor of international relations at Kyung Hee University and director of the China Center at the Korea Research Institute for National Security. He was a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.