Russian strongman Vladimir Putin hosted North Korea Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui in Moscow on Monday, a visit timed to coincide with President Donald Trump’s whirlwind tour of Asia this week that he has expressed hope would include a meeting with dictator Kim Jong-un.
Trump landed in Malaysia on Saturday for several meetings with local leaders, gathered there for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The American president then traveled to Japan on Monday, engaging in a rare visit with Japanese Emperor Naruhito and meeting with Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae for the first time since her recent election to the post. Takaichi, the first woman to hold the post, is a hardline conservative who has expressed enthusiasm for engaging Washington, and Trump, more closely.
Trump is then scheduled to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, where officials have stated they expect him to meet with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
China has for decades maintained a priority position in North Korean politics as a close ally that fought against America and South Korea during the active hostilities of the Korean War. Under Kim Jong-un, however, Pyongyang has pursued closer relations with Russia, going as far as signing a mutual defense agreement with Putin and deploying troops to Europe to help Russia prolong its extended invasion of Ukraine.
As part of these deeper ties, Kim sent Choe to Moscow for meetings with Putin and her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week. Choe is expected to travel to Minsk, Belarus, after she completes her itinerary in Russia. The Kremlin readout of Putin’s meeting with Choe offered no details regarding the contents of the meeting, sharing only the early public engagement the two had in front of reporters. In this exchange, Putin told Choe to “please convey my best regards” to Kim and recalled a “detailed discussion” with Kim during their mutual visit to Beijing in September to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II.
Russian and North Korean media offered little more coverage of Choe’s meeting with Lavrov. According to a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, the two diplomats “reaffirmed their firm commitment to implementing the provisions of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement,” the mutual defense treaty that preceded North Korea’s entry into the Ukraine invasion.
“When discussing the current international situation, a common understanding was expressed that the main reason for the growing tension on the Korean peninsula,” the Russian Foreign Ministry added, “in Northeast Asia and the world as a whole is the aggressive actions of the United States and its allies.”
The South Korean news outlet Yonhap, quoting Russian outlets, relayed that Choe used her meeting with Lavrov to effusively praise the Pyongyang-Moscow relationship, claiming their ties were at a “new height” currently and offering Kim’s full support of the Russian invasion.
Lavrov, in turn, expressed the Putin regime’s gratitude for the “heroic deeds” of North Korean soldiers killed fighting the Ukrainians in Kursk, a Russian region that Ukraine counter-invaded last year in response to the ongoing, full-scale invasion.
North Korea has elevated its participation in Kursk and its long-term military presence in Europe to top-tier political status at home. Last week, Kim personally presided over a groundbreaking ceremony for a new cemetery for North Koreans killed fighting against Ukraine, to be built accompanying a museum sharing propaganda exalting North Korea as a belligerent party in the Ukraine invasion. In his speech to mark the groundbreaking, Kim suggested that North Korea had only begun its position as a nation deploying its military to hostilities abroad, a “beginning of a new history of militant solidarity between the DPRK [North Korea] and Russia.”
“Even the transfusion of a huge volume of blood by the United States and its Western bloc turned out futile,” Kim claimed, “in making the righteous blood in the vessels of the two peoples cool, and even the appalling atrocities by fascism could not dampen the phoenix-like fighting spirit and valour.”
While Kim has maintained his belligerent rhetoric against the United States, Trump has repeatedly expressed a willingness to meet Kim Jong-un personally while he is in Asia. The American president went so far as to suggest that he would modify his schedule if necessary to meet Kim before he returns home.
“I haven’t mentioned it, I haven’t said anything, but I’d love to meet with him if he’d like to meet,” Trump told reporters while en route to Japan on Monday. “I just have a good relationship with him, I would love to see him … It’s [South Korea] our last stop, so it’s pretty easy to do.”
Trump and Kim have met in person three times, their final substantive meeting ending with Trump walking out, stating the North Koreans were too intransigent in their demands for lifting sanctions. Trump has remained complimentary of Kim in his personal remarks since, however, and Kim made the extraordinary gesture of sending Trump a letter wishing him a speedy recovery following his survival of an assassination attempt last year.
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