DELEGATION OF DEFENCE OFFICIALS
The North Korean delegation includes prominent members of the party who handle defence industry and military affairs, including Munitions Industry Department Director Jo Chun Ryong, an analyst said, which suggests the visit will focus on defence industry cooperation.
“The presence of Jo Chun Ryong indicates that North Korea and Russia will conclude some type of agreement for munitions purchases,” said Michael Madden, a North Korea leadership expert at the Washington-based Stimson Center.
South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Chang Ho-jin, the former ambassador to Russia, said it would be in Moscow’s interest to consider its international standing after the Ukraine conflict and remember that it helped form the current nonproliferation regime.
“Military cooperation would be violating Security Council resolutions, whatever (Russia) does with the North,” he said.
On Monday, Washington renewed its warnings to Pyongyang not to sell arms to Russia that could be used in the Ukraine war, urging the North to abide by its promise not to provide or sell weapons to Russia.
The US State Department said any transfer of arms from North Korea to Russia would violate UN Security Council resolutions, which ban any arms transactions with North Korea.
“We, of course, have aggressively enforced our sanctions against entities that fund Russia’s war effort … And will not hesitate to impose new sanctions appropriately,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.
North Korea is one of the few countries to have openly supported Russia since the invasion of Ukraine last year, and Putin pledged last week to “expand bilateral ties in all respects in a planned way by pooling efforts”.
In a striking display, Kim gave a personal tour of an arms exhibition for Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu when he visited Pyongyang in July, and they stood together to watch a military parade that featured banned ballistic missiles.
Russia had voted, along with China, to approve Security Council resolutions as late as 2017 punishing North Korea for ballistic missile launches and nuclear tests.
