Sun, Sep 27, 2015 page5

• Diplomatic ties warm between India and North Korea

  • AP, NEW DELHI
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  It is not the most obvious international friendship. On one side is the world’s largest democracy, with its riotous collection of battling political parties and a freewheeling media with thousands of newspapers, television stations and Web sites. On the other is a deeply isolated nation, a country with no political opposition and a media that does not question the long-ruling family. Access to the Internet, except for a handful of government-approved Web sites, is restricted to a tiny elite.

  However, ties are warming between New Delhi and Pyongyang, with mineral-hungry India looking to boost trade while North Korea, facing sometimes-rocky relations with China, searches for new friends.

  “We feel that there should not be the usual old hurdles and suspicion,” Indian Ministry of Home Affairs official Kiren Rijiju told The Hindu newspaper after a recent meeting with North Korea’s ambassador.

  “We have been discussing inside the government ways and means of upgrading bilateral ties,” Rijiju said.

  The goodwill began earlier this year, when North Korean Minster for Foreign Affairs Ri Su-yong went on a three-day trip to India, just a few weeks before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to Seoul for meetings with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

  While Pyongyang and New Delhi have long had diplomatic relations, things cooled a couple of decades ago as India blamed North Korea for selling nuclear technology to its archrival, Pakistan, and North Korea grew upset that India was growing close to South Korea.

  However, times change.

  North Korea, for its part, has had to accept South Korea’s economic dominance, and how even a longtime ally like China is anxious to increase trade with Seoul.

  India, meanwhile, has a growing economy with an increasingly voracious hunger for raw materials. “There is always a resource crunch that pushes countries to look for new friends and new allies,” Jawaharlal Nehru University Centre for Korean Studies professor Vyjayanti Raghavan said.

  While the diplomatic moves would not be newsworthy for most countries, and have yet to result in a concrete agreement, they are significant for North Korea, whose foreign relations are largely limited to a handful of other countries.

  North Korea had long been anxious to repair ties with India Raghavan said.

  “But North Korea had nothing much to offer to India. Now India can benefit from the relationship,” she said.

  North Korea’s export economy is highly dependent on raw materials, mostly coal and iron ore, though it is also increasingly seen as a potential major source of the rare earth minerals used in high-tech products.

  Pyongyang is also anxious to forge new alliances. China remains North Korea’s closest ally and is by far its largest trade partner, but ties are not as warm as they once were.

  Beijing reacted angrily to North Korea’s most recent nuclear test, in 2013. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has kept his distance from China after taking power in 2011, following his father’s death, apparently concerned about the growth of Beijing’s influence. Kim has not traveled China, where his father was a regular visitor, and has held few talks with top Chinese officials. North Korea has also strengthened ties with Russia as relations with Beijing have cooled.

  New Delhi might also see the renewed North Korean ties as a way to make quiet advances into a country long seen as part of China’s sphere of influence. Chinese-Indian relations are delicate and often-contradictory, with mutual distrust — and occasional squabbling over their long shared border — mixing with a desire to increase trade and avoid open confrontation.

  India has watched warily as China has made inroads across the Indian Ocean, where New Delhi’s traditional dominance has declined as a result of billions of dollars in Chinese aid and construction projects.

  Rijiju’s choice to meet with North Korean diplomats could have been intended to make a point, since he is from Arunachal Pradesh, a state that Beijing has long insisted is actually Chinese territory.

  And what will India’s other allies say about improved ties with North Korea?

  That probably does not matter. While North Korea remains economically isolated from much of the world, treated as a pariah by Washington and much of the West, India has long charted its own foreign policy course.

  Even as India became increasingly close in recent years to the US, New Delhi remained friendly with such countries as Iran and Syria.

  “Why shouldn’t India have relations with North Korea?” said Hamdullah Saeed, an opposition politician who visited North Korea as part of a parliamentary delegation in 2013. “India can have ties with who it wants.”
• Most Popular

  • 1

    US to deliver 10 new F-16s, source says

  • 2

    Coco Gauff falls in Berlin after French Open victory

  • 3

    Costa Rica sent officials to train in Taipei, report says

  • 4

    Victory pose

  • 5

    Taipei begins park renovations amid resident protests