By Stephen Blank
Pyongyang appears to have shunned Moscow’s attempts at direct engagement.
Kim Jong Un’s recent brutal purge of his uncle Jang Song Thaek and other senior officials was apparently connected to high-level discord over North Korean relations with China. As a result we may well see a spike in bilateral tensions between Pyongyang and Beijing. But China is not an isolated case. Observers have largely failed to notice that North Korea had managed even before the purge to alienate Russia and that trend apparently has no connection to the DPRK’s domestic policies.
Indeed, Kim Jong Un has done nothing to advance the Russo-North Korean accords reached by his father Kim Jong Il in 2011 with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. These accords were the product of a Russian initiative triggered by the crises of 2010, namely North Korea’s shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and its torpedoing of the South Korean ship Cheonan. Russian officials announced in September 2010 that the region was on the brink of war and fully grasped that in case of war Russia’s vital strategic and tangible material interests would suffer grievously, yet Moscow possessed no means of leverage over North Korea and had little influence on South Korea.
Russia’s ensuing diplomatic initiative culminated in the agreements of August 2011 between Medvedev and Kim Jong Il. North Korea announced its readiness to consider the possibility of a trans-Korean railway linked to the Trans-Siberian railway (TKR-TSR) and a trans-Korean gas pipeline connected to Russian gas holdings. North Korea could then charge tariffs for the gas passing through its territory and potentially ultimately avail itself of that gas as a possible alternative to nuclear energy in the future. South Korea liked the idea because it allowed the ROK to invest in the North without disavowing previous sanctions and policies it had announced and because it reduced tensions. Meanwhile, for Russia the accord gave some hope of upgrading Russia’s rather marginal status in the Six-Party talks while also gaining leverage over both Koreas and reducing tensions. Russia even forgave North Korea’s state debt as part of the agreement.
Read the full story at The Diplomat