Betting on Moscow: DPRK’s Overtures to Belarus Reflect Broader Russia Priority
North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui meets Belarussian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov in Minsk in late October. | Image: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus.
Following a visit to Moscow, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui spoke at the Third Minsk International Conference on Eurasian Security in Belarus, where she declared the DPRK ready to “respond to all threats on the Eurasian continent”.
Certainly, these are not empty words, given North Korea has already proven itself ready to come to Russia’s aid in efforts aimed at revising parts of the Eurasian security landscape.
The context of such a sweeping statement, however, underscores the need to unpack what this means for North Korea’s security strategy. In all likelihood, the intention behind Choe’s statement is not to “respond to threats” across Eurasia as a whole, but rather in areas where the Russian Federation seeks to exercise its greatest direct security influence.
When viewed in the context of Choe’s separate pledge in Minsk to deepen the Belarus-North Korea bilateral relationship, the sum total of these developments marks a notable step toward closer strategic alignment with Moscow in the security realm beyond the bilateral level.
Defining ‘Eurasia’ and ‘Eurasian security’
In order to understand why the DPRK would reach out to a fellow Russian ally in a bid to strengthen its own security ties with Russia, it is useful to start from the vantage point of Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver’s ‘Regional Security Complex Theory’. This theory, which can help us to understand Russia’s position regarding the security situation on the Korean Peninsula, likewise sheds light on the manner in which the DPRK is attempting to position itself as a broader, longer-term partner in Russia’s vision of security in relation to its geopolitical spheres of influence.
‘Eurasia’ is itself a loaded and poorly-defined term loosely thrown around in geopolitical discourse, although it is often used as a synonym for the ‘post-Soviet space’. Yet even the narrower term ‘post-Soviet space’ itself is a problematic phrase, as the successor states of the USSR have fewer and fewer binding ties to merit grouping based on an increasingly-distant shared past.
An understanding of the nature of current North Korea-Russia security relations, for its part, requires a cross-regional approach. According to Buzan and Wæver in their 2003 book Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security, Russia belongs to the so-called “post-Soviet regional security complex”, while the DPRK belongs to the “Northeast Asian regional security sub-complex” (which itself is part of a broader “East Asian security complex”).[1]
This discrepancy, despite both complexes’ geographic proximity to each other, exists because of the different types and geographic scopes of the threats that each regional security complex faces. States in Northeast Asia, for example, do not have to contend with the “three evils of separatism, terrorism and extremism” against which structures such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization were conceived. Conversely, as Buzan argues, Russia has only been able to penetrate into the Northeast Asian regional security sub-complex by means of its participation in mechanisms such as the Six Party Talks on denuclearisation in relation to North Korea (and now, of course, its bilateral security treaty with the DPRK).
In this vein, North Korea is likewise only able to penetrate the so-called post-Soviet regional security complex by means of sustained contributions to Russian security interests in Eurasia. Common cause against the United States has helped bring North Korea and Russia together. For Pyongyang, there are few better ways to demonstrate its alignment with the Russian Federation than by contributing directly to the pursuit of Moscow’s security interests contra Washington’s own geopolitical and security policies. If Ukraine truly is, in the words of the late Polish-American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski, the key to Russia’s status as a Eurasian empire, then North Korea is expending resources in order to help the Kremlin recover part of its strategic reach that Moscow believes it lost after the collapse of the USSR.
Conceivably, Pyongyang believes that by assisting the Russian Federation as it has, the Kremlin will in turn offer greater security support to the DPRK in a revised security landscape on Russia’s periphery. This support may also extend beyond the narrow definition of security or military assistance to other fora, for example the UN Security Council where Russia used its veto to block the renewal of the DPRK Sanctions Committee Panel of Experts mandate last year.
Nevertheless, given that most of the Russian Federation’s security concerns outside of Northeast Asia have little direct meaning in Pyongyang, for the DPRK to truly position itself as an effective actor aligning with Russian global security policies in the long-term, North Korea would have to do more to solidify its bona fides as a Russian security partner.
Although Buzan and Wæver’s theory can explain differences in security issues across regions at the present time, the various regional security complexes that they laid out in Regions and Powers may need revision to accommodate new developments in regional security. The different reactions from the DPRK and the ROK to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for example, may be the sign of a shift from Buzan and Wæver’s paradigm of separate ‘post-Soviet’ and ‘Northeast Asian’ regional security complexes to the formation of a “Eurasian security complex”.
Certainly, by strengthening ties with the Kremlin, North Korea is seizing the opportunity to make its mark in a revised security order on parts of the Eurasian continent. As Russian geographer Mikhail Mashukov argues, amid shifts in the geopolitical concept of the “Eurasian space” in Russian discourse, Moscow could view North Korea as a friendly state (in contrast to South Korea’s position as an unfriendly country) on Russia’s eastern periphery.[2]
Not content to simply be seen as ‘friendly’ toward Moscow, North Korea appears to be taking additional steps to solidify its position not merely as a bilateral security partner for Russia, but as part of a wider, emerging Russia-led security order on the Eurasian continent. Pyongyang’s recent efforts to develop relations with Minsk represent a key part of this effort.
Belarus as the Third Wheel
Chinese President Xi Jinping leads a group of visiting leaders to Beijing in September. North Korean President of State Affairs Kim Jong-un, and Russian President Vladimir Putin closely flank Xi to the left and right of the Chinese president respectively, with Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko seen further back to Xi’s left. | Image: Xinhua.
Aside from her remarks at the security conference in Minsk, Choe Son-hui also met with her Belarusian counterpart, Maxim Ryzhenkov. The two sides expressed a desire to expand the scope of Belarus-DPRK bilateral cooperation in order to advance the formation of a multipolar world. Belarus, for its part, has received recognition as an important partner for the DPRK from the highest levels of the North Korean government, as evidenced by a recent invitation from Kim Jong-un to Belarussian President Aleksandr Lukashenko to visit Pyongyang.
In January, a report by the Russian state TASS news agency quoting the Belarussian president as saying North Korea had proposed a “top-level” meeting between Pyongyang and Minsk prompted a rare rebuke from Kim’s sister Kim Yo-jong. Calling for “veracity and frankness” from the Belarussian side, she claimed instead that it was Minsk who had been requesting top-level contact “for at least two years” in reference to the possibility of a meeting between Kim and Lukashenko.
Both sides appear to have moved past this diplomatic hiccup with Kim and Lukashenko meeting for talks in September on the sidelines of a military parade in Beijing. Kim then reiterated an open invitation to Lukashenko to visit Pyongyang “at any convenient time”, with the Belarussian president responding in the affirmative, but with no firm plans announced as yet. A photo released by Xinhua showed Chinese President Xi Jinping leading a group of leaders at the military parade in Beijing, with Putin close by to his right, Kim to his left, and Lukashenko further back and away from center.
On the security front, it is undeniable that Belarus and North Korea have several commonalities that bind them together – both are Russian treaty allies, and are among the few countries in the world that have openly supported Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Indeed, both North Korea and Russia’s erstwhile security partners have distanced themselves from Moscow and Pyongyang – China has been cautious about growing closer to North Korea in a multilateral context, while Russian security partner Kazakhstan has distanced itself from Moscow in light of the Russia-Ukraine War.
A strengthened relationship between the DPRK and Russia’s other major ally Belarus, therefore, would conceivably lead to a greater sense of Pyongyang as a permanent actor within the orbit of Russian security interests. After all, Choe would have no reason to denounce NATO in Minsk unless the North Korean government saw the DPRK’s security as tied to that of Russia.
Preparing for the future
Independent of the apparent shifts in regional security paradigms originally laid out in Regional Security Complex Theory, North Korea will have a difficult time sustaining its security partnership with Russia in the long term if it is not rooted in a deeper strategic vision.
Of course, there is no denying that any attempts on Russia’s part to revise the security order in its own geopolitical neighbourhood could fundamentally change the related security situation on the Korean Peninsula.[3] As far as the North Korea side of the DPRK-Russia relationship is concerned, Pyongyang’s intentions behind strengthening its bilateral relationship with Minsk likely lie in ultimately fostering a sense of strategic closeness with Russia. Pyongyang likely believes now is the time to position itself as a true strategic partner for Moscow: Deepening ties with another like-minded, authoritarian ally in Belarus, as shifts to geopolitical and security spaces occur, only serves to help North Korea in its security bet on Russia.
[1] Buzan, Barry, and Ole Wæver. Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security. Vol. 91. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
[2] Машуков, Михаил [Mashukov, Mikhail]. “[On the delimitation of Eurasia’s eastern space] О делимитации восточного пространства Евразии,” Geography 2 (2024).
[3] 이상준 [Lee, Sangjun] “북-러 조약 체결 이후 북-러 관계 밀착의 특징과 영향 [The Features of and Influences on North Korea-Russia Rapprochement Following the Partnership Agreement],” Korea Development Institute, North Korea Economic Review, November 2024 .
