Putin to visit North Korea on June 18-19

Jun 18, 2024, 10:29 am

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin hold a summit at Russia’s Vostochny spaceport on Sept. 13, 2024./ Source: Yonhap News

AsiaToday reporter Park Young-hoon

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit North Korea on June 18-19. Some predict that the two nations will renew a treaty of friendship that would include a provision for an automatic military intervention. The new treaty, which is close to the level of the alliance treaty formed between North Korea and the Soviet Union in the past, is expected to shake the situation in Northeast Asia.

It marks Putin’s first visit to the North in 24 years. He last visited North Korean in Julye 2000, when Kim Jong-un’s late father, Kim Jung-il, was in power. It is the third time that Putin and Kim meet in person.

According to the Kremlin on Thursday, Putin will pay a state visit to North Korea for a two-day trip starting Tuesday at the invitation of North’s leader Kim. It is the first return visit in nine months since they held a summit at Russia’s Vostochny spaceport in September.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) also announced the visit but offered no further details.

North Korea and Russia are expected to form a stronger military cooperation partnership this time than the friendship treaty they signed 24 years ago. They signed a treaty to strengthen economic cooperation in February 2000, and Putin who visited the North in July of the same year, announced a joint declaration based on the treaty after meeting with then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Since the North Korea-Russia summit in September last year, North Korea has expressed its position to re-establish bilateral relations by operating diplomatic channels at various levels under new laws.

The South Korean government and the presidential office are keeping an eye on the possibility that the new treaty, which both countries have mentioned, will be close to the one that stipulates “automatic military intervention.” The government plans to take different countermeasures depending on the intensity of the close ties between Pyongyang and Moscow.

In fact, ahead of Putin’s visit to the North, the government has delivered a kind of warning message to Russia not to cross the line that it can tolerate. “We sent a warning message to Russia not to cross the line,” Jang Ho-jin, the head of the National Security Office, said. “Russia needs to think carefully about which side of the two Koreas is important after the war in Ukraine is over.”

#Putin #Kim Jong-un #North Korea #Russia