It surely comes as no surprise to hear that North Korea does not like the United Nations. The hermit kingdom has long derided the organisation as espousing ‘double standards’ in what Pyongyang has believed to be an unfair demonisation of its ‘sovereign rights’ to test missiles, conduct satellite launches – a euphemism for testing ballistic missile technology – or blow up roads and railways linking the communist North with the capitalist South.
So when North Korea’s sharp-tongued ambassador to the UN, Kim Song, announced yesterday that the country would accelerate its nuclear and missile development the timing was anything but random. The reasoning, he said, was the ‘nuclear threat of [the] United States’ against North Korea’. It was surely no coincidence that just two days from then Americans far and wide would head to the polls to choose their next president.
North Korea will be sure to take advantage of the UN’s paralysis
The rhetoric from Kim was no different that the words expounded by his namesake, Kim Jong Un (Kim is the most popular Korean surname after all) only last week. In the wake of the launch of a new, solid-fuel Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Supreme Leader made clear how the only way to respond to the ‘adventurist military activities’ of the United States and its allies was to ‘bolster up our modern strategic strike forces’.
North Korea’s dislike of the United Nations is almost as old as the country itself. Kim Il Sung, the country’s first leader, was hardly enamoured with the then-nascent global security institution: after North Korea’s invasion of South Korea precipitated the Korean War, the UN security council adopted Resolution 82, which condemned the ‘armed attack on the Republic of Korea by forces from North Korea’.
Over the past 75 years, North Korea’s opposition to the United Nations has only grown. The last set of UN security council sanctions resolutions targeting North Korea were imposed in December 2017, following an ICBM launch that November. Not only did these sanctions freeze assets belonging to North Korea’s Ministry of Defence, but importantly, they also called for the return of North Korean workers abroad within 24 months. Yet, straight out of North Korea’s playbook, it soon found ways to evade the sanctions.
The historical record has shown that in US presidential election years, Pyongyang’s penchant for provocations increases dramatically. This year is no exception: true to form, North Korea greeted the dawn earlier today with its own chorus, launching at least seven short-range ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan/East Sea. Prior to this barrage of missiles, Kim Yo Jong, the notorious younger sister of Kim Jong Un, made clear how North Korea would not sit idly by after South Korea’s recent air drills with the United States and Japan on Sunday, the latter in response to North Korea’s ICBM launch last week. Reinforcing Pyongyang’s time-old excuse, the vitriolic Miss Kim underscored that the ‘one and only choice’ that North Korea could make, in response to such ‘war rehearsals’, was to develop and bolster its ‘self-defensive nuclear deterrent’.
2024, however, is no ordinary US election year, not least with heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the increasingly overt cooperation between North Korea and Russia. Only hours before this morning’s missile launch, another vitriolic female North Korean politician, Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, met a grateful Vladimir Putin in Moscow in celebration of Russia’s ‘unity day’.
Putin could not stop smiling as Minister Choe made clear how North Korea would ‘powerfully support and provide assistance’ to Russia’s ‘holy war’, reinforcing North Korea’s commitment towards aiding its former Cold War patron in Moscow’s hour of need. And what about the fact that the deployment of 12,000 troops, missiles and several millions of rounds of artillery shells is in blatant violation of UN sanctions – which Russia, in fact, supported back in 2017? North Korea certainly does not care; and neither does Putin.
With the United Nations security council now at its most toothless since the inception of the organisation in 1945, North Korea will be sure to take advantage of the institution’s paralysis. The likelihood that any missile launch, or even nuclear test, will lead to additional UN sanctions is very slim, if not negligible, now that both Russia – a permanent member of the security council – and North Korea have vowed to offer unwavering mutual support. Moreover, with the expiration of the mandate of the UN panel of experts in March this year, on account of Russia’s veto, a further complication arises, namely just how North Korea’s sanctions violations will be effectively monitored.
The million-dollar question remains: just what will North Korea get in return, now that it is dispatching humans – and not just weapons – to Russia? Whilst the answer to this question remains unknown, we know that Jong Un has been anything but shy in outlining his desire for advanced missile technology, such as satellite technology, and will be nothing short of a demanding customer for Putin. The Supreme Leader’s pursuit of his ultimate objective, namely international recognition of North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, will only continue apace, even if we do see a potential, brief return to the days of love letters and leader-to-leader talks with Washington. Kim Jong Un will not let anything get in the way of this quest – not even Mr Trump.
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