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Moscow has suggested North Korea take part in joint naval exercises with Russia and China, in what would be a first for the Pyongyang regime.
Military and political ties between Moscow and Pyongyang have intensified since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, but joint naval drills would mark a new level of co-operation as tensions rise between the US and China and their respective allies in east Asia.
Yoo Sang-bum, a lawmaker from South Korea’s ruling conservative party, said the country’s intelligence services believed Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu had proposed joint exercises during a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in July.
Yoo said the proposal was discussed at a closed-door briefing to parliamentarians by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. His account was reported by South Korean state news agency Yonhap on Monday and confirmed to the Financial Times by his office.
Shoigu had vowed to strengthen military ties with North Korea during a visit to Pyongyang to mark the 70th anniversary of the Korean war armistice, during which he attended a military parade alongside Chinese politburo member Li Hongzhong.
Speaking to reporters later on Monday, Shoigu confirmed Russia was considering joint exercises with North Korea.
“We discuss this with everyone, including North Korea. Why not? These are our neighbours . . . Of course, it’s being discussed,” Shoigu said. “We are already conducting [exercises] with our Chinese colleagues, moreover, we have joint patrols of strategic bombers of naval units.”
On Saturday, Russia’s ambassador to Pyongyang, Alexander Matsegora, told Russian state media that North Korean participation in military exercises alongside Russia and China would be an “appropriate” response to US-led military drills in the region.
At a summit last month, the leaders of the US, South Korea and Japan established a framework for holding “annual, named, multi-domain” trilateral military exercises.
Last week, the US and South Korea concluded a fresh round of joint exercises involving nuclear-capable US B-1B bombers, and a “breakthrough operation” with ground troops simulating a counterattack into North Korean territory.
The two allies also conducted joint maritime missile defence drills with Japan in response to Pyongyang’s latest attempt to launch a military reconnaissance into space.
“The need for some kind of joint response seems appropriate” because of the “constant bilateral and trilateral exercises” being held by the US and its “junior partners in Asia”, Matsegora told Russian state news agency Tass.
The ambassador added he was not aware of any concrete plans for joint drills to be held between North Korea, Russia and China, and that he was expressing a personal opinion.
Yang Uk, a defence expert at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said any joint drills between the three autocracies would mark the first time North Korea had conducted such exercises with another country.
He added that while North Korea has traditionally only had a very weak navy, its development of a new generation of naval corvettes meant “they finally have the chips to play the naval game”.
Last month, Kim attended the launch of a cruise missile from an Amnok-class corvette, stressing its ability to deliver nuclear weapons.
“What is actually necessary in the battlefields is not the numerical and technical superiority of the arms and equipment, but the overwhelming ideological and spiritual might of the service personnel using them,” North Korean state media reported Kim as saying, in an apparent reference to the modest size of his naval assets.
Additional reporting by Courtney Weaver in Berlin
