North Korea gloats, South Korea pauses over Russia’s war in Ukraine

From their distinctly different vantages in Pyongyang and Seoul, the leaders of North and South Korea are watching the Russian assault on Ukraine with opposing responses calibrated to their own special relationships with Moscow, as well as Beijing.

For North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the Russian invasion provides an opportunity to align clearly with President Vladimir Putin for one special reason: Kim is proud of his country’s nuclear weapons, which he has refused to relinquish in the face of offers of vast amounts of aid by both the U.S. and South Korea, and Putin has struck a responsive chord by placing his nuclear forces on alert against the U.S. and its NATO allies.

The fact is that Putin’s main enemy in Ukraine, besides the Ukrainians themselves, is the United States. President Biden is asking Congress to approve $10 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine while vowing in his State of the Union address that Putin will “pay a price” for what’s happening there. Putin’s defiance is all the more reason for Kim to gloat. In triumphant tones, North Korea’s foreign ministry declared the U.S. and its allies had “systematically undermined the security environment of Europe by becoming more blatant in their attempts to deploy an attack weapon system.” All Russia wanted, it said, was a “legal guarantee for security” — by no coincidence, the terminology North Korea uses to rationalize its nuclear program.

For South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the issue of how to respond is far more complicated. His initial response was a blatant attempt at keeping his American ally happy while holding off Russian complaints. “As a responsible member of the international community,” he declared, “the Republic of Korea will send its support to, and take part in, the efforts of the international community to peacefully resolve the situation, including economic sanctions.” Anyone reading his statement in a vacuum with no prior knowledge of the news never would have known that soldiers were firing weapons at one another and people were bleeding and dying.

For Moon, the puzzle of what to say and do is much more difficult than it is for Kim, and that’s not just because North Korea is a granite-faced dictatorship with no freedom of speech while South Korea is a free-wheeling democracy. 

First, Moon is going to step down soon after an election on March 9 in which Lee Jae-myung, the candidate of the ruling Minjoo or Democratic Party, faces a severe challenge from the candidate of the conservative People Power Party, Yoon Suk-yeol. Moon, an ardent advocate of reconciliation with North Korea, has gotten nowhere at drawing Kim into dialogue since the failure of Kim’s second summit with former President Trump in Hanoi three years ago. Moon doesn’t want to offend either Russia or China, which has lined up with Russia on the Ukraine invasion. Nor does he want to ruin South Korea’s alliance with the U.S., which keeps 28,500 troops in Korea.

The second problem is that South Korea has virtually no fuel resources. The South counts on Middle Eastern countries for the bulk of its oil and natural gas but still imports 20 percent of its natural gas from Russia. For decades, South Korean leaders have talked about a pipeline to carry natural gas from Russia down through North Korea to South Korea. North Korea refuses to consider such an impossible dream, but years from now, who knows? It might just happen if Russia and the two Koreas ever scale political and diplomatic hurdles.

South Korea must consider other issues. China abstained from a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine, showing that China isn’t joining the U.S. and NATO in opposing whatever Russia is doing. That may have been less than a wholehearted endorsement of the Russian veto after China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said China “deplores the outbreak of hostilities between Ukraine and Russia,” but there’s no doubt whose side China is on in any conflict involving the U.S.

Nor is there any question that South Korea must walk a fine line between its American ally and those two great powers much closer to home. China is South Korea’s biggest trading partner and North Korea’s northern neighbor, benefactor and protector. For all those reasons, South Korea must get along with China as well as Russia. Smooth relations with both of them are vital. Together they saved the North from defeat in the Korean War and might do so again. 

If North Korea was a little slow in coming out with public support of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the reason may have been that Kim was waiting to see what his Chinese friends were saying. Now that Kim’s got his signals straight, Moon has much more to worry about. “We have to find an intricate balance between the alliance and the strategic partnership,” said Wi Sun-lac, a former South Korean ambassador to Russia who has been advising liberal candidate Lee Jae-myung on foreign policy.“We have to use our own standing and identity and not be swayed by others.”

Certainly, Wi acknowledged in a talk at the Seoul Foreign Correspondents’ Club, South Korea had to make decisions “based on our alliance with the U.S.” He did not see “the likelihood of war between the U.S. and Russia,” but instead sees a “non-military solution.” Similarly, he envisions “relief of tensions” on the Korean peninsula “by diplomatic methods.”

South Korea’s prime minister, Kim Boo-hyun, whose main job is to preside over cabinet meetings, evoked Moon’s dream of the U.S., China and both Koreas agreeing on an end-of-war declaration affirming that the Korean War, which ended in a heavily armed truce in 1953, is really over. Kim turned aside worries that the North would demand dissolution of the U.S.-Korea alliance and withdrawal of U.S. forces as conditions for a statement that logically should morph into a peace treaty. “We do not mean a peace treaty right away,” he assured foreign journalists.

The conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, meanwhile, continues to demand that the North give up its nuclear program, stressing the need for improving relations with the U.S., which is not at all enthusiastic about an end-of-war declaration, and resuming joint military exercises on the ground involving U.S. and South Korean troops.

In Pyongyang, as North Korea returned to missile-testing after taking a break during the Beijing Olympics, Kim Jong Un had reason to be more confident than ever about his nuclear program. Putin’s mention of a nuclear option confirmed his own reliance on nukes and missiles as the ultimate threat against enemies near and far.

Donald Kirk has been a journalist for more than 60 years, focusing much of his career on conflict in Asia and the Middle East, including as a correspondent for the Washington Star and Chicago Tribune. He currently is a freelance correspondent covering North and South Korea. He is the author of several books about Asian affairs.