How North Korean troops in Russia have changed peninsula dynamics
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Hello listeners and welcome to the MK News Podcast. This episode is recorded on Tuesday the 19th of November and I'm here in the podcast studio with John Lee. John, it's been a long time. It's been several months, yeah. It's been months. I haven't really seen you much in the studio since you started your own podcast, the Career Pro Podcast. I know. It's been way too long since I got to be part of your podcast again. How are you enjoying Career Pro Podcast? It's a fun time.

It's a very different format from what you guys do over there. It is. It's a lot more sarcastic, sardonic, cynical, sneering. It's like me. It's an audible expression of your personality. Pretty much. Okay. Now, this Thursday's long interview I've got with an American, Sean King, talking about what to expect from Trump 2.0.

So we're going to preempt that a little bit today by talking about how Korea is already girding its loins, so to speak, to prepare for Trump 2.0. Right. So I'm not going to talk too much about North Korea because that's not my specialization. So I'll leave that up to the experts. Get him out.

I'm sorry. Sorry. I got my fraud mask on now. You old fraud. Okay. But these things that we're talking about today are North Korea relevant. Sure. And North Korea will pop up its head a few times in the conversation. It will be tangentially related to North Korea. Sure. Right. So now that Trump is officially going to come back in January, South Korea has been making some preparations. And I think the most

evidence move that we've seen that happened was just over the weekend in Lima. Now, what happened in Lima? Lima, that's the capital of Peru. Our listeners will know that. But why Lima? The APEC summit just took place over there. All these heads of states were present and so was the South Korean president.

and he wasted no time in meeting with some of the most important leaders that he had to talk to now obviously it was his uh last meeting with biden the official right but biden was obviously because he's on his way out he's not the most important person that he had to meet with that was more symbolic more than anything else uh he actually and perhaps a thank you for you know all that he had done to bring together the trilateral talks at that camp sure that was all great but those are

possibly on their way out with a new guy coming in, the once and future president. And so now that they're on their way out, he has to meet with other leaders to actually have much more practical, tangible gains. And so one of the first people that he met with was with the Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba. Right, and it's his first, well, his first outing as prime minister, isn't it?

It was his first outing as Prime Minister. Shigeru Ishiba, I need to get used to saying that name. Let's assume he'll be in there for at least a year. Let's hope so, for his sake. Now, Ishiba, he did not really have a good time in his first outing. He didn't stand up to meet with the other leaders. He went to Alberto Fujimori's grave and he missed the entire family picture with the other leaders. But, you know, that's his own deal. What Yoon did was immediately he met with Ishiba and he said, okay, we need to talk about trade. We need to talk about mutual security concerns.

And you can already see what's going on in Seoul and Tokyo. The last time around when Trump was president, Japan was led by Shinzo Abe. And Shinzo Abe and Donald Trump famously got along very well. - They were golf buddies. - They were golf buddies. They wanted to do the Japanese helicopter destroyers. They were having a grand old time. But without Shinzo Abe, Japan is now thinking we are also, we by being Japan, is also going to have to face a lot of these headwinds that comes from the Trump administration.

And so Yun and Nishiba are now meeting together and saying, we need to form a united front. Right. So this is a word we're going to, or this phrase we're going to use a few times. They're trying to Trump-proof their own situation ahead of January 20th. Donald Trump is going to come to Tokyo and Seoul and say, hey, increase your defense budget. We're going to increase tariffs. We're going to threaten to withdraw U.S. troops from both of your countries. Both countries are facing the same kinds of threats right now.

And so by having a united front, it will be a bit more difficult for Trump to try to divide these two countries. And so that was the first leader that he met with. But Yoon also met with others. Do we have any sign of whether there was a rapport? I mean, that's important in this kind of...

Cross seas relations. Well, Yun definitely had rapport with Ishiba's predecessor, Fumio Kishida. We know that, yeah. We do know that. Now, Ishiba himself, the man has the charisma of a damp, wet rag. Oh, he might get on well with the Chancellor of Germany. Perhaps so. Well, who's also on his way up, but that's a different story. So we're not quite sure if there was chemistry between those two, but what we do know is that they have mutual national interests.

And they're seeing that and they're willing to put those things first. Well, one can hope. Let's hope. Well, at least that's the calculus so far. But beyond Ishiba, Yoon also met with the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. Is he on his way out? We're not quite sure with Trudeau. Trudeau has always been the comeback kid. He's been the Prime Minister of Canada for a long time. So maybe he'll stick around. Who knows?

But it wasn't just with Trudeau. He also met with the Sultan of Brunei. Now, meeting with the Sultan of Brunei might not be such a big deal. Now, for those of you who might know, I was born and raised in Brunei. Now, Brunei is a tiny country that is in no one's real top ten list of leaders to meet with. The Sultan was once the world's richest man about 30 years ago. A long time ago, yes.

But the reason why Yun actually met with the Sultan of Brunei was because this is the latest Southeast Asian country that he's met with, that he's tried to secure energy relations with. Yes, because they have a lot of oil, don't they? Yes, they do have a lot of oil. LNG, liquefied natural gas. Before that, Yun visited Singapore, he visited Indonesia, and they all had energy security agreements. So now meeting with the Sultan of Brunei, that's just adding another, shall we say, notch on the belt. Right. Wow. Okay, so...

So he was a busy diplomat there in Lima. And he's still going to be busy. He's now off in Brazil to join the G20 event, and he's going to meet with others. Right. But of course, the most significant meeting that he had was with Xi Jinping.

Yes. Wow. Okay, hold on. Now, just before we get to Xi Jinping, I just want to flag for our listeners there that next year it's Korea's turn to host the APEC summit, right? Yes, it is. There'll be a series of rolling ministerial meetings and heads of government meetings sometime here in Korea next year. The big meeting is down in Gyeongju, the old capital of the Silla dynasty. So part of being in Lima is also to sort of lay the groundwork for next year in which Korea will be an important player. Right, exactly.

Now, regarding Xi Jinping, meeting with Xi Jinping is a huge deal. As soon as Yun became president, he shifted very hard towards strengthening the alliance with the U.S., improving cooperation with Japan, which came at the cost of South Korea's relations with China. And there have been no love lost between Yun and Xi.

Well, and China-Korea relations have been rocky ever since the stationing of THAAD in 2017. Exactly. Things have been rocky. But now that these two leaders have met and… First time, was it? It's not the first time. They met once in 2022. I think this is the second time they've actually formally met. Now, because of this meeting, what we can expect to see is that China, you can already see their gears turning.

While Trump is saying fair trade, and by fair trade, he really means fair to the U.S., beneficial to the U.S., and not to anyone else, Xi Jinping is saying free trade. Now, does he mean free trade? That's a different question altogether. But at least on the surface, you can already see these two differences between Xi and Trump.

And also, before they actually met two weeks ago, China re-included South Korea in its visa-free waiver program. So South Koreans can once again visit China without a visa.

And so China's already making moves and saying, okay, we know Trump's coming back. We know there's going to be some sort of disturbance in the force. So we might as well try to insert ourselves to put a wedge between these two countries. So they're wooing Korea. They are trying. They're not going all out, of course. It's right now slow and steady, but you can already see what's happening from Beijing's perspective.

Yoon actually made a very interesting comment yesterday. Oh. He said that it's not a binary choice when it comes to the US and China. Now, for those of you who remember, during the last presidential election campaign, that was the same thing that Lee Jae-myung said.

There are people in other countries saying the same thing too. Exactly. It's not uncommon. But when it comes to Yun, that's very different. Yun was saying pro-US, pro-Japan. He did not really speak much all about China. His ministers did, but not Yun himself. But he himself has also now said that it's not about choosing between these two countries. Right.

Okay, so he's once more continuing that age-old tightrope walk between the U.S. on one side and China on the other. Exactly. It's going to continue. So this is how we try to tangentially go on North Korea now. Okay. So...

Right now, we've all read the news. There are North Korean troops in Russia. They've signed this treaty that formalized their partnership, their alliance, or whatever you want to call it. Mutual defense, yes. Mutual defense. And now China's saying, this is what Xi Jinping, we will not allow a war to take place in the Korean Peninsula that harms Chinese national interests.

That was a very, very strong statement I saw yesterday on the Twitter. Coming from China, talking about their close ally, North Korea, that was a very harsh statement. Yeah. In diplomatic speak, it doesn't get more harsh than that. Yeah.

Yeah, they usually, I think, over the decades, China's often said something like, hey, you, both sides, calm down. No matter who it is that's doing the provocation or escalation. No escalation, diplomacy, negotiations. Hey, both sides, let cooler heads prevail and calm down and de-escalate. Right. But now they're saying, hold, listen, you two, I'm not allowing any kind of war. We will not allow a war. So at once it can seem a bit hard.

But at the same time, you can definitely tell where Xi Jinping is coming from. And so if I were Kim Jong-un, I would be a bit annoyed with Xi Jinping right about now. Because you can see these moves, very slow glacial moves, but sorts of, you can see very subtle improvements in relations between Beijing and Seoul right now.

Right, because Beijing and Pyongyang, things have been a bit awkward there, right? I mean, China's been frozen out of North Korea in a way because North Korea's been going all out and focusing its attentions on Russia, relations with Russia. If you look at the bigger picture, some people might question whether Beijing is really upset about North Korean troops in Russia. Because it...

It does somewhat align, though. Even though they might have differences under the surface, they do want to set up this sort of block that opposes U.S. security interests. Yeah. But...

That minutia does still matter. Who has more leverage over the peninsula? Who is sitting where and sitting next to whom? That still matters in diplomatic speak. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Very interesting to see what goes on there with that statement coming out of China. Was that Xi Jinping himself who said that? Yes, it was. He will not allow a war. Will not allow a war. That harms our interests. Exactly. Yeah.

Okay. Now, speaking of the Ukraine war, South Korea, I think, still we're at the stage where they're not sending any weapons to help Ukraine. There's talk about it, though. The talk seems to be, are things moving closer to a point? No. Okay.

I don't think so. I know that there are a lot of people who are hoping that South Korea will finally send weapons to help Ukraine, but I just don't see it happening. Two reasons. Donald Trump has come back, and the South Korean president simply does not have the political capital to be able to do that. Domestically speaking, he is just handcuffed by the National Assembly. The National Assembly is controlled by the opposition party, and the opposition party is dead set against sending weapons

troops or weapons to Ukraine. Is this an ideological thing or pragmatic? What's the rationale for it? I don't think it's ideological. I think it's completely pragmatic because...

one day, whether it happens tomorrow or 10 years from now, the war will come to an end. And Russia is not going anywhere. And neither are their vast energy reserves. South Korea needs access to the energy market. And so I think the Democratic Party right now is really thinking, we need to think long term. We need to consider the possibility or the eventuality, rather, that South Korea is going to have to make nice with Russia again one day. Okay.

I see. So for that reason, it seems unlikely that South Korea will ever be sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. We do expect them to be sending some people over there, some intelligence people. Is that happening? Has the government said anything about that? There's a much better probability of that happening than weapons going forward. What the opposition parties have been saying is that there are laws that prevent...

the president from sending, from deploying troops to foreign countries. Right. But... That's one thing. But the law also says, however, if you want to dispatch individual units who are unarmed to a foreign country, then you don't need parliamentary consent. Right. So this could be a PSYOPs unit, for example, or a human interrogation unit, for example, or similar to observers. Signal intelligence, human intelligence. So the... But they have to be unarmed and they have to be

Okay. They cannot be deployments of large... If you think of a military unit, there has to be a hierarchy. There has to be a commanding officer and all those middle managements, but that cannot be present in any of these sort of dispatchments under the law. So that might happen. So what about a lieutenant with some enlisted men? It's a platoon. If it's a platoon, that's already a hierarchy. Okay, so...

It has to be individuals. Really just individuals? No hierarchy whatsoever and must be unarmed. Okay, so pragmatically speaking, they'd have to be embedded in Ukrainian units. Right, they'd have to be embedded with Ukrainians, they'd have to have the Ukrainian security forces. They would not be able to operate independently. Okay, right. But there may come a day, perhaps not in the too distant future, when a North Korean meets a South Korean on or near the battlefield.

It's not implausible, but I would not bet money on it. Because they are unarmed and because of the individuals and because of the amazing storm that could potentially happen if these two forces actually met in the battlefield, I think South Korean forces, those individuals, would be placed way behind the front lines, nowhere near where they can actually come face-to-face with direct conflict with the North Koreans. Yeah.

Well, you know, there's a lot of surprises and love and war, so we never know how this is going to play out. Sure. Anything is possible. Anything is possible, yeah. Now, John, again, ahead of Trump coming in, South Korea has been expressing some interest lately in AUKUS Pillar 2 and perhaps being involved in it. What is AUKUS Pillar 2? We all know that AUKUS is this new U.S.-U.K.-Australia trilateral relationship involving submarines, nuclear-powered submarines.

But what's AUKUS Pillar 2, and how can South Korea be involved in that? Pillar 2 is obviously not the same as Pillar 1. It doesn't have the military sort of block alliance, whatever they want to call it. But it is going to be the section of the part of AUKUS where they focus on technology developments, dual-use technology.

Okay, now dual use, I'm used to hearing this word when talked about North Korea, for example, that sanctions forbid the export of dual use technology to North Korea. That's technology that could be used for peaceful or military purposes. But in this case, we're talking a whole different context.

Well, we were talking about the same thing, actually. Well, perhaps different technologies. For instance, AI. AI can be used for something like chat GPT. It can also be used to put into a radar that says this is a flock of birds or this is a fleet of enemy planes. So AI is definitely one thing.

Quantum computing is another thing. So this is going to help to open a lot of markets for South Korea. South Korea needs a lot of cooperation. And AUKUS, the United States, the UK, and Australia, these three countries are leading in these technologies. And South Korea will be able to participate in this pillar too and will be cooperating with these countries to actually develop these technologies that will eventually be used for civilian and military purposes. Ah.

And so this will help South Korea to also say to the U.S., hey, you're not the only guy in the bloc anymore. Sure, you are still the biggest guy in the bloc, and you are still our only main ally, but we can also talk to the U.K., we can also talk to Australia. Right, and South Korea in the last few years has become a big exporter of military equipment and defense technology.

So this would help them? Actually, I've written an analysis about that, which will be published in a few hours. Ah. South Korea's... At KoreaPro.org? At KoreaPro, exactly. South Korea's weapons exports is not going to look as rosy as it did over the past two years. Oh. Trump's return is going to throw a wrench in South Korea's very ambitious goals. And if you want to know more, subscribe to KoreaPro. There you go. Thank you for that crossover message on the NK News podcast.

Thanks, everyone, for listening, and we hope to see you again soon, John Lee. Thank you for having me, Joe. It was always great.

A reminder that starting from November 20th, our full-length episodes with special guests will be exclusively available to NK News subscribers. This shift will allow us to invest more in bringing you top-quality interviews, cutting-edge analysis, and a more comprehensive NK News experience across our website and podcast platforms. So don't miss out. Subscribe now to stay fully informed and support our mission to raise the bar in North Korea reporting.

Until the end of November, podcast listeners can sign up for just a dollar for their first month with the following 12 months at 50% off. Head to nknews.org/join for more. You'll get full access to the NK News website, news, analysis and opinion every day, our daily update and week ahead newsletters, plus get exclusive invites to online webinars and occasional in-person events where you might even meet me. Join our community today and help support the podcast grow.

Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode and to our post-recording producer genius, Gabby Magnusson, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions, and fixes the audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time.