South Korea fears Russia will inspire ‘rogue nations’ in region
Joel Gehrke
Video Embed
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has heightened the risk of war in the Indo-Pacific, according to South Korea‘s envoy to the United States, who portrayed North Korea’s dictatorship as both anxious and dangerous.
“This is not just an event that happened in Europe. It has very serious implications for Korea and other countries in the Pacific,” South Korean Ambassador Taeyong Cho said Thursday during an event in Washington. “And we, of course, have a great interest in making sure that this unlawful invasion would not have negative implications on the peace and security [of the] Indo-Pacific — to make sure that the rogue nations in our region will not take wrong lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Cho juxtaposed that assessment with South Korea’s emerging emphasis on exerting influence and expanding cooperation with U.S. allies around the world, from the Pacific Islands to central Europe. Yet his focus did not stray for long from Seoul’s oldest enemy, which shattered its previous records by conducting scores of illicit missile launches and tests.
“We all know that Kim Jong Un is not a happy man these days because North Korea’s economy — always bad over the years but really in shambles these days,” Cho said, estimating that the regime’s foreign trade has fallen to “less than 5%” of its historic peak a decade ago.
SOUTH KOREA TO DEVELOP ‘STEALTHY DRONES’ AND ‘DRONE KILLER SYSTEM’
“North Korea has utterly failed in terms of providing [for the] basic needs of the North Korean people. So this dynamic, how it’s going to evolve in North Korea,” he continued at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think it’s worth [it] for the international community to close[ly] watch what’s happening in North Korea because this dynamic is continuing.”
Kim presided over 69 missile tests in 2022, a year that ended with a sortie of North Korean drones into South Korea’s airspace. But those displays, Cho implied, are not a full recompense for the economic suffering the Kim regime has endured.
“Kim Jong Un has difficulty delivering on his promises to his people, what they call the dual pursuit of nuclear weapons and the economic developments,” the envoy said before noting Kim’s recent emphasis on ”the need for strengthening internal discipline, meaning … preventing outside cultures coming into North Korea and influencing the younger generations.”
North Korean state media characterized some of the tests as involving “tactical nuclear operation units,” raising the specter of Pyongyang using tactical nuclear weapons to win a war of aggression — a tactic that U.S. and European officials believe has been incorporated into Russia’s nuclear doctrine.
“The Ukrainian war still is a regional war, but the way Russians have waged it, the implications are strategic and global — and for quite a long time to come,” Janis Sarts, a former senior Latvian defense official who now directs NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Riga, told the Washington Examiner in June. “And clearly, North Korea, as well as a number of other nations that want to challenge the West’s dominance, are watching closely — not only the nuclear piece but many other pieces.”
Sarts offered that analysis just days after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida professed “a strong sense of urgency that Ukraine today, maybe East Asia tomorrow” at a major security conference in Singapore. And while Japan and South Korea have a difficult relationship dating back to the Second World War, both countries have unveiled new strategies for the Indo-Pacific that align with U.S. efforts to coordinate an “alliance of democracies” to mitigate threats from Russia and China.
“The U.S. government … places an emphasis on improving our relation with Japan and also strengthening our trilateral partnership among [the] U.S., Japan, and ROK,” Cho said, using the acronym for the official name of the South Korean government, the Republic of Korea. “And this in itself has huge implications in the future — events that are going to happen in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol joined their counterparts from Australia and New Zealand in attending the NATO Leader Summit in Madrid this summer, an unprecedented convergence of U.S. allies from across the North Atlantic and Indo-Pacific. And South Korea, despite Putin’s displeasure, has also emerged as a heavyweight in the international arms sales arena due to a multibillion-dollar deal to equip Poland, a central European member of NATO that has played a key role in Western aid to Ukraine over the last year, with new tanks, artillery, and even light fighter jets.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“While it is regrettable that [the] people of Ukraine [have] been suffering from this ongoing conflict, I think the international community, and the United States, have been responding to this event very robustly and in a very right way,” Cho said. “And I’m very proud to say that Korea is firmly in [those] international community efforts.”