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While the deal has unsettled South Korean and Japanese officials, the two U. S. allies have waited for years for demanding security situations to develop from North Korea.
By Motoko Rich and Choe Sang-Hun
Motoko Rich reported from Tokyo and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul
With ballistic missiles flying nearby, Japan and South Korea do not want to forget the risk that North Korea and its nuclear arsenal pose to their neighbors. But the surprising revival of a Cold War-era mutual defense agreement during a stopover this week by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang, the northern capital, puts further pressure on some of the closest neighbors. of the hermit kingdom.
Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed that if one country was in a state of war, the other would provide “military and other assistance with all means at its disposal,” according to the text. published on Thursday through North Korea’s official news agency.
Analysts were still examining the text of the deal to see how far it would extend, whether in terms of Putin in Ukraine or in terms of any longer-term clashes on the Korean Peninsula. But that commitment, along with signs that Russia may provide fair assistance to North Korea’s ongoing quest to expand its nuclear capabilities, has unsettled officials in Tokyo and Seoul.
Kim has become increasingly hostile toward South Korea and this year abandoned a long-standing goal of reunification with the South, although that is unlikely to happen. He now describes the South only as an enemy that will have to be subdued, if necessary, by nuclear war. And he has tested his ballistic missiles by launching them at Japan, demonstrating North Korea’s provocative stance toward its former colonizer.
Analysts say Kim’s alliance with Putin may simply increase tensions in Northeast Asia by widening the gap between the democratic partnership between the United States, South Korea and Japan, on the one hand, and Russia’s autocratic side, Korea. of the North and Japan, on the other. other.
“This is bad news for foreign efforts to save North Korea from advancing its nuclear and missile technologies,” said Koh Yu-hwan, former director of the Seoul-based Korea Institute for Unification Studies.
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