North Korean leader Kim Jong-un showcased his tighter ties with old allies and battlefield lessons from Ukraine, as he positions North Korea as a strong nuclear power before US President Donald Trump’s trip to China.
After three days of back-to-back missile tests, including purported cluster munitions plus a bomb for targeting enemy electric grids, North Korea is hosting China’s top diplomat for the first time in six years. That comes months after Kim stood beside Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a military parade in Beijing, for what Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) called a “historic meeting.”
Kim and Wang on Friday reaffirmed close bilateral ties in their discussions in Pyongyang, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
Photo: EPA/KCNA
Kim stressed the need for broader contact to protect the two countries’ shared strategic interests, while Wang highlighted Beijing’s commitment to advancing relations under last year’s agreement, the KCNA said.
Rail links and Air China flights between Beijing and Pyongyang resumed this year, with analysts speculating this could pave the way for a future return of Chinese tourists to North Korea, which would give Kim another source of hard currency.
Kim’s flurry of diplomacy — and weapons tests — come as Trump gears up to travel to China in the first visit of a sitting US president in nearly a decade. South Korea has been trying to encourage a meeting between the US and North Korean leaders around that trip, but it is unclear whether either side is open to the idea.
“North Korea now has a battle-forged alliance with Russia, and China continues to stand behind the regime,” Korea Research Institute for National Strategy researcher Doo Jin-ho said. “It’s no longer the country it once was — and is much harder for the US to deal with.”
Trump and Kim met three times during the US president’s first term, as the Republican leader worked to convince the North Korean leader to scale back his nuclear program — an effort that ultimately failed.
Despite that, Trump has said he gets along with Kim “very well” and would be available for another meeting.
Bolstered by growing military ties with Russia — and now closer relations with Beijing — Kim has asked Washington to recognize it as a nuclear power for any dialogue to begin.
Wang’s trip marks the latest in North Korea’s broader efforts to bolster overseas ties after years of isolation and sanctions. Kim has also hosted Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in Pyongyang, and signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation.
Lukashenko and Kim are allies in Putin’s war against Ukraine. North Korea provided artillery ammunition, missiles and soldiers, while Belarus served as a launchpad for Russia’s full-scale invasion in the neighboring nation four years ago.
Although diplomatically solid, the Russia relationship appears to have cooled off a bit in recent months, Leiden University professor and Crisis Group analyst Christopher Green said.
It is “natural Kim would rebalance, seeking to maintain as diversified a range of partners and income sources as he can within the limits of North Korea’s capabilities,” he added.
The experience gained by North Korea in the Russian conflict with Ukraine is helping it modernize its military, including by incorporating drone intelligence directly into artillery firing systems and creating smaller, more nimble infantry units instead of large scale battalions, Henry Jackson Society National Security Centre Director John Hemmings said.
Pyongyang is also now attaching growing importance to artificial intelligence, anti-satellite weapons and electronic warfare.
The upshot is that the Korean People’s Army “is significantly more dangerous than the one that existed just two years ago,” Hemmings said.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
Myanmar yesterday published a parliamentary bill proposing the death sentence for those who detain or violently coerce people into working in online scam centers. Internet fraud factories have flourished in Myanmar, part of Southeast Asia’s scam economy, targeting Internet users worldwide with romance and cryptocurrency investment cons. The multibillion-dollar black market attracts many willing employees, but repatriated foreigners have also reported being trafficked to sites in Myanmar and tortured by scam center operators. The draft legislation would allow capital punishment for “violence, torture, unlawful arrest and detention, or cruel treatment against another person for the purpose of forcing them to commit online scams.” The
RSS