According to the terms of a new historic defence agreement reached by the two totalitarian countries, North Korea and Russia have promised to utilise all available means to give quick military aid in the event that the other is attacked.
During a rare official visit, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un signed a new strategic partnership agreement on Wednesday in Pyongyang. Putin called the accord a “new level” in bilateral relations.The pact, which comes against the backdrop of Putin’s grinding war against Ukraine, is the most significant agreement signed by Russia and North Korea in decades and is seen as something of a revival of their 1961 Cold War-era mutual defense pledge. It also consolidates the Kim regime’s powerful link with a world power that wields a veto on the UN Security Council.
On Thursday, North Korean state media KCNA published the full text of the pact, which also includes political, trade, investment, and security cooperation.According to the text, Article 4 states that should either country “get into a state of war due to an armed aggression” the other “shall immediately provide military and other assistance with all the means at its disposal.” The newly released text will now raise several questions for Western observers, including whether Russia’s powerful nuclear deterrent now extends to North Korea, or if the two nations will now hold joint military drills.
Putin referenced the defense clause after the meeting with Kim Wednesday, saying it provides “for the provision of mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties to this agreement.” Kim, meanwhile, called the new “alliance” a “watershed moment in the development of the bilateral relations.”Yu Ji-hoon, research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses said the treaty’s “automatic intervention clause” means all military assets will be mobilized, “including the army, navy, and air force.”
Details on the clause are scant, however, and Yu said it was “necessary to closely monitor the provisions regarding military intervention by North Korea and Russia.”For example, North Korea refers to “South Korea-US training, or training targeting North Korea” as an attack, “but it is not viewed as equivalent to war,” Yu said.The agreement cements the two countries’ deepening alignment in the face of their international isolation over Moscow’s war in Ukraine and Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile program.
The US, South Korea and other countries have accused North Korea of providing substantial military aid to Russia’s war effort, while observers have raised concerns that Moscow may be violating international sanctions to aid Pyongyang’s development of its nascent military satellite program. Both countries have denied North Korean arms exports, despite significant evidence of such transfers. Speaking after his meeting with Kim, Putin rankled against what he called “the imperialist policy of the United States and its satellites,” and said Russia “does not rule out the development of military-technical cooperation with the DPRK,” referring to North Korea by its official acronym.
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