Warming Moscow-Pyongyang alliance escalates danger, South Korean lawmakers say

A high-level delegation of left-leaning South Korean lawmakers has called during a visit to Washington for their country’s conservative president to resist Western pressure to directly arm Ukraine against Russia, even as North Korea is widely accused of aiding the Kremlin in the fight.

“We need to slow this escalation down,” said Chung Dong-young, a South Korean National Assembly member who is in the U.S. capital this week with other liberal lawmakers, pushing for more engagement and less confrontation on the divided, heavily armed Korean peninsula.

“If [South] Korea were to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, Russia will transfer lethal weapons technology to North Korea,” Mr. Chung told The Washington Times in an interview alongside National Assembly members Wi Sung-lac, a former South Korean ambassador to Russia, and Kim Byung Joo, a retired four-star South Korean military general.

All three are members of South Korea’s Democratic Party and part of the “Democratic Alliance” that has challenged the conservative rule of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol since the alliance took control of the National Assembly in the country’s recent midterm elections.

Their message marks the latest fallout stemming from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summit with North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang last week. U.S. and South Korean officials have for months accused North Korea of supplying Russia with artillery shells, missiles and other equipment in recent months to help fuel its war on Ukraine, and Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim made global headlines on June 29 by inking a new “strategic partnership” that includes a pact to come to each other’s defense in the event of war.

The Yoon administration in Seoul swiftly condemned the development, with President Yoon dispatching his national security advisor, Chang Ho-jin, to announce that Seoul is now considering providing arms directly to the government in Kyiv to help fight off Russia’s ongoing invasion.

South Korea, a growing arms exporter with a well-equipped military backed by the United States, has for more than a year been providing humanitarian aid and other support to Ukraine, while also joining U.S.-led economic sanctions against Moscow. But the Yoon administration has thus far refused to directly provide arms to Kyiv, citing a longstanding policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

Despite speaking out against Russia’s war, the South Korean president has resisted Western pressure on the issue, even after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg publicly called on Seoul — a close U.S. military ally, but not a NATO member — to provide direct military support to Ukraine last year.

That Mr. Yoon is now reconsidering has rankled the South Korean president’s detractors, who argue Seoul must be careful not to get drawn more deeply into the Ukraine war by Mr. Putin.

“We don’t think it is appropriate how the Yoon administration has responded,” said Kim Byung Joo, the retired South Korean military general and National Assembly member visiting Washington this week.

Seoul needs to avoid making “emotionally charged” reactions to the expanding alliance between Russia and North Korea, said Mr. Kim, who warned that “there is a possibility that if directly provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, it will have the same effect as sending troops to Ukraine and that would mean [South] Korea is clearly an adversary of Russia.”

Mr. Putin’s appears to have roiled the South Korean political landscape in recent days. Following the Yoon administration’s announcement that it would reconsider directly arming Ukraine, the Russian president warned that Seoul would be making a “big mistake” if it shifts its policy.

The BBC reported that Mr. Putin threatened during remarks in Vietnam, where he traveled after visiting North Korea last week, that Moscow is willing to arm Pyongyang if the U.S. and its allies continue supplying Ukraine with weapons.

“Those who supply these weapons believe that they are not at war with us,” the Russian president said. “We then reserve the right to supply weapons to other regions of the world.”

Mr. Kim, the South Korean lawmaker, told The Times that “alliance between Russia and North Korea poses a threat to not only the Korean peninsula, but Northeast Asia.”

“What we need is risk management measures. If we provide lethal weapons directly to Ukraine, we may cross a line of a point of no return,” he said. Instead, he argued, South Korea should reach a “separate pact with the United States that, if Russia were to provide any new weapons technology to North Korea, the United States will provide similar or the same technology to [South] Korea.”

“We also could explore the possibility of driving a wedge between Russia and North Korea to stop them from further developing a close relationship,” Mr. Kim said.

Mr. Chung, meanwhile, maintained that “the United States has welcomed President Yoon’s reaction of exploring the possibility of [South] Korea directly providing lethal weapons to Ukraine.”

“The United States should leave [South] Korea to make its own decision,” he told The Times. “If the U.S. were to push or try to not prod [South] Korea into making any kind of decision, it may backfire.”

Deepening Moscow-Pyongyang alliance

Last week’s Putin-Kim summit also triggered unease in U.S. national security circles.

The mutual defense pact inked by the two “was a victory for Mr. Putin and a major component of his strategy for Eurasia,” according to Joseph R. DeTrani, a regional expert and former member of the Senior Intelligence Service of the CIA.

“The language in this new treaty is similar to the language in the 1961 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between the then-Soviet Union and North Korea,” Mr. DeTrani wrote in a commentary published by The Times this week. “That treaty was downgraded in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.”

Mr. Wi, the former ambassador to Russia who is among the South Korean lawmakers visiting Washington this week, told The Times that while the new pact is less formal, the security commitments made by Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim are “very similar” to the Soviet-era treaty.

North Korea has such a mutual defense pact in place with only one other nation: China.

U.S. officials are scrambling to determine China’s posture toward the latest developments. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said in public remarks Monday that Biden administration officials believe China does not fully support the warming Moscow-Pyongyang alliance.

Other national security sources have cast doubt on that assessment, arguing that Mr. Putin would not have visited Pyongyang without a green light from Chinese President Xi Jinping, and that Beijing may be satisfied to keep Washington distracted by threats in Northeast Asia, while China pursues its goal of taking control of the island democracy of Taiwan, situated more than 1,000 miles south of the Korean peninsula.

Biden’s ’lack of interest’

The South Korean lawmakers visiting Washington were also critical of the Biden administration’s overall policy toward North Korea.

Mr. Chung lamented that the administration has pursued the same policy of “strategic patience” toward North Korea that the Obama administration pursued for eight years.

“There are some parts of [the policy] that could be recognized as lack of interest or a lack of attention,” he told The Times. “During these two presidencies, the threat of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction have at least doubled.”

“While on the surface, the Biden administration is open to dialogue open to interim steps. We recognize a need for a change from the status quo,” said Mr. Chung. “It is time for change especially in light of the recovery of the alliance between Russia and North Korea.”

“We are not sure if the Biden administration is likely to change course,” he said, acknowledging that there is a possibility of change if the coming U.S. election is won by former President Donald Trump, who pursued an aggressively alternative approach by holding two direct summits with North Korea’s leader in 2018 and 2019.

Mr. Wi added that the time is ripe for Washington to pursue some form of “four-party” talks with China, North Korea and South Korea to try and restart diplomacy aimed at deterring Pyongyang’s growing nuclear missile capabilities and pursuing the goal of denuclearizing North Korea.