With the world roiling in two wars in Ukraine and Palestine, while anxieties rise over a potential third conflict erupting over Taiwan, yet another potential flashpoint appears to be brewing in the Korean Peninsula, with sabre-rattling on both sides causing alarm.
Since the beginning of this year, sharp exchanges between the North Korean regime and the South have not been confined to barbed words. We’ve seen military exercises, missile tests, and balloons containing trash punctuating the sky above the 38th parallel.
All the work towards a rapprochement that we saw between the Koreas in 2018 have been scrapped. And now, Russia has entered the scene as a significant player in the situation. A reawakening of this frozen conflict is adding to general instability in the world today.
These developments, that are themselves the result of US imperialism’s short-sighted adventure in Ukraine, are creating a new balance of forces in East Asia, upending the US’ own imperialist designs for the region.
Balloons, drills, and missile tests
Tensions between the Koreas have risen sharply since Yoon Suk-yeol won the presidential election in South Korea by a small margin in 2022. Yoon represented the interests of the hardline, pro-US faction of South Korea’s ruling class, and he spared no effort in closely aligning South Korea with the agenda of US imperialism on the world stage, while reversing much of the previous liberal administration’s efforts to reconcile with the North. In doing so, he has forcefully realigned South Korea with Japan, and sounded hysterical alarms about North Korea’s relations with Russia.
The North Korean Kim Jong Un regime responded in kind, mostly through their trademark colourful denunciations (a particular highlight was a state editorial calling Yoon a “diplomatic idiot,” and “the destroyer and disturber of the regional situation”), but also by firing missiles that are mostly symbolic in nature.
This year, however, marked several new steps on both sides that have seriously altered the situation.
Yoon Suk-yeol began the year with a New Year’s address that promised to complete a defence arrangement with the US that would “completely block” the North’s nuclear and missile threats. Shortly after, Kim Jong Un declared in the North’s Supreme People’s Assembly that “unification with the Republic of Korea (the South) is no longer possible” while characterising the South as a “hostile state”. This is a significant reversal on the North’s part, which has always laid its claim over all of Korea.
Since then, more serious missile tests were conducted by the North, among them a barrage of cruise missiles in late January, as well as a hypersonic missile test in March. Most recently, in July, the North announced they are testing a ballistic missile capable of carrying “super large” warheads.
Tensions between the Koreas have risen sharply since Yoon Suk-yeol won the presidential election in South Korea by a small margin in 2022 / Image: www.kremlin.ru
The South, in the meantime, conducted warplane drills with the US in February. In June, the US announced a large-scale joint exercise between the US, South Korea, and Japan which took place just a few weeks later. A part of this exercise involved docking a US aircraft carrier in Busan, the most important port city in South Korea.
Amidst these shows of force, an actual exchange of projectiles occurred, not of shells, but of unpleasant balloons.
On 28 May, North Korea began to float over hundreds of balloons loaded with garbage and faeces into the South, leading to airport closures and very unpleasant sights for pedestrians in Incheon and Seoul.
This stunt was widely ridiculed by South Korean and western media, citing it as yet another evidence of the purportedly unhinged nature of the North Korean regime. They neglect to mention that it was in direct response to the South legalising the flying of its own balloons, containing propaganda material, to the North, as well as the upholding of a dictatorship-era ban on speech praising the North. In other words, the Yoon government took a step in provoking the Kim regime, and the latter duly responded.
Yoon Suk-yeol then responded to the North’s balloons by fully suspending a security deal made in 2018, and quickly resumed live-fire exercises in regions close to the border. The sound of gunshots once again filled the air over Panmunjeon.
Why did Yoon take these provocative steps? Since his election in 2022, Yoon’s reactionary hard-right government has seen plummeting support and waves of strikes. Just this year we’ve seen a national doctors’ strike to defend jobs, and an upcoming Samsung workers’ strike among others. Earlier this year, Yoon’s party suffered a crushing defeat in the National Assembly election with high turnout. In early July, a petition for Yoon’s impeachment gained 1 million signatures 10 days after its launch. Yoon is therefore motivated to fan war hysteria to shore up his own position.
Regionally, another figure is now playing a key role in the balance of forces in the Korean Peninsula: Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s visit
On 18 June, while tensions and balloons flew high, Putin arrived in Pyongyang to much pomp and celebration. This was his first visit to the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ in 24 years, and Kim Jong Un adorned the streets of Pyongyang with Putin’s portrait to welcome his visit.
Among many festivities, the two leaders signed a “Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership”. The treaty, the full text of which North Korea immediately published, contains two key elements.
One is that the two countries are obligated to render each other immediate military assistance should either suffer an attack. The other is a commitment to assist each other in breaking out of their economic isolation caused by US-led sanctions, which both are now subject to.
The military provisions of the Treaty are but a mirror image of how NATO operates: an attack on one is an attack on all. Kim Jong Un was quick to characterise this treaty as a “great DPRK-Russia Alliance”.
Why did Putin and Kim take such a dramatic step together, when the two countries' relations have been relatively cool for decades?
The answer is the war in Ukraine.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, under NATO and US provocation, western imperialism has attempted to isolate Russia politically and economically. In actual fact, their shortsighted efforts have succeeded in pushing their strategic rivals into closer cooperation. Russia has become increasingly economically dependent on China – its main strategic rival. And now, both subject to US sanctions, Russia and North Korea are entering into ever closer relations.
The prolongation of the Ukraine war has meant that Russia has a growing need for artillery shells and munitions, which are difficult or expensive to procure abroad due to sanctions imposed by the West.
North Korea, with its large state-run military industry, has an enormous stockpile and capacity to create more munitions, which can be delivered to Russia on demand, supplementing its own substantial military capabilities.
In addition, the US has been shipping long-range missiles to Ukraine that are capable of reaching Russian soil, and Ukraine has already used them against Crimea. Russia’s pact with North Korea also gives Putin a potential deterrent that he can use against the US supplying further weapons to Ukraine, as he in turn can threaten to supply long-range missile technologies to North Korea, threatening South Korea, Japan, and US bases in East Asia.
In exchange, Russia is now shipping the foodstuffs, raw materials, and technology that North Korea desperately needs, to the extent that the economic crisis that North Korea was reportedly reeling from in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is now easing.
This was a win-win situation.
In the longer term, both sides see benefits in forging stronger ties. Russia provides North Korea with a way out of its economic and diplomatic isolation in the world, as well as an alternative to China’s dominating influence.
North Korea, in turn, can be a powerful backup to Russia, with its large standing army and military industry, which would make any sensible rival think twice about encroaching on Russia’s sphere of influence.
At the end of the day, both are on the receiving end of US aggression. The need to team up against a common foe has thus pushed the two regimes together. A bloc between the fourth largest (Russia) and the fifth largest (North Korea) standing armies in the world is therefore formed. The US imperialists and Joe Biden specifically have no one to thank but themselves.
US interest upended
Is the US happy with this outcome? Not in the slightest. The coming together of Russia and North Korea marks a blow to the US’ strategy in Asia, which is mainly to curtail China with the aid of Japan and South Korea around the potential conflict over Taiwan.
Now that Russia has entered the scene, North Korea’s hand against the US and its allies became significantly strengthened. It can place a powerful check on Japan and South Korea, which means that they and the US would potentially have to divert more military resources in building up their defences against a North Korean attack, with less to spare for Taiwan.
Such a build-up, especially in South Korea, could accelerate into an arms race with many unpredictable outcomes for the US to manage, which would distract from its overall focus on China.
Such a build-up, especially in South Korea, could accelerate into an arms race with many unpredictable outcomes for the US to manage, which would distract from its overall focus on China / Image: public domain
Moreover, the North Korea-Russia Treaty effectively spells the death of the US’ ambition to denuclearise North Korea.
For the past three decades, the US has moved might and main to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons. Even in its previous isolated conditions, North Korea not only managed to withstand the pressures but also successfully maintained and developed its stockpile. Today, according to the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses, they are estimated to have 80 to 90 warheads.
The key to this result was North Korea’s dogged defiance against the scores of sanctions and condemnations from all sides, not only from the US, but also in the past by China and Russia itself. Its bureaucracy also heavily prioritised resources on military developments, which allowed the production of nuclear weapons to continue, although amidst an economy that always seemed to teeter on the edge.
The US had hoped that North Korea’s economy would eventually falter to a point that it would have to give up its nukes in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But thanks to their own strategy of isolating Russia, thereby inadvertently breaking North Korea’s isolation, this has decisively failed. Still, the US official line remains one of denial, prompting some US strategists such as Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, to conclude that successive regimes have achieved the opposite of their intended aim:
“In demanding full denuclearization, successive administrations have encouraged North Korea to become a serious nuclear power. Only by conceding past failure and pursuing a new course is there much chance of actually thwarting the North’s ambitions.”
With the backing of Russia, with all the raw materials and technologies it provides, the “chance of thwarting North Korea’s ambitions” is put to bed. They now have absolutely no motive to pare down their nuclear arsenal but have every reason to bolster it.
All signs lead to one conclusion: that US imperialism’s position in Asia suffered a severe blow at its own hands.
China’s position
That US imperialism’s position in Asia becomes more complicated is in general good news for Beijing, yet when asked to comment on the signing of the North Korea-Russia Treaty, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian responded with cool detachment: “we noted relevant reports. This matter pertains to the bilateral cooperations between North Korea and Russia. I have no comment.”
Why was the response so reserved? China is interested in wooing South Korea and Japan, its fifth and sixth largest trading partners in the last year respectively, far ahead of North Korea. Within both South Korea and Japan, factions in the ruling class favour a friendlier approach to China and greater distance from the US, and China has been working to woo over these elements to undermine the US’ hold on the region. An intensified standoff would only push South Korea and Japan further away from China, which is an ally of both North Korea and Russia.
The Chinese regime, which has no small amount of economic leverage over both Russia and North Korea, would no doubt prefer to pursue a policy of softening relations between the two Koreas.
The relative decline of US power in East Asia
The complication for China is far less problematic than the problems for the US, who now has to divert significant resources away from Taiwan to guard against a strengthened North Korea. All these developments only serve to further highlight the relative decline of US imperialism’s dominance in the world.
The Biden administration pushed for the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, not only to weaken a major rival and cut the economic links between Europe and Russia, but also to recover its prestige after its disastrous defeats in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Biden thought that it could pick on Russia, defeat Putin, and restore the US’ supremacy over the world, above all over China.
This plan not only backfired tremendously in Ukraine, but also pushed the US’ adversaries together, weakening its position in East Asia, where it needed to focus its power most in order to restrain China.
The net result of all this for the South Korean working class, especially those that live near the border, is that they have to once again live within ear shots of the live-fire exercises and the ever-present threat of military conflict. This situation is imposed upon them by none other than US imperialism and the South Korean ruling class itself.
US imperialism has brought nothing but exploitation, bloodshed, divisions, conflicts and suffering everywhere that its reach extends, including in the Korean Peninsula. Now that it is in decline, it is only bringing more instability and danger into the situation.
The only way out for South Korean workers and youth is to rise up and overthrow the South Korean capitalist rulers and kick out imperialism, establishing a democratic workers’ state, as a part of a world revolution to sweep capitalism and bureaucratic dictators out of the Korean Peninsula, East Asia, and the world.