Russia has much to offer the Korean peace process, from denuclearisation expertise to experience as a mediator

Russia has been sidelined in the Korean peace process so long that it’s easy to forget its historical role on the peninsula. The Kim-Putin meeting was a reminder of the major role Moscow could again play

John Barry Kotch

Published: 3:00am, 1 May 2019

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Six years as a recluse consolidating power, often in unsavory ways, while perfecting the country’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles along the way, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has since come out of isolation, giving new meaning to the 1960s Beach Boys hit, I Get Around.

In the last 16 months, he has met four times with China’s President Xi Jinping, three times with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in, twice with US President Donald Trump and finally with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, the latter just across the Russian-North Korean border in Vladivostok, in counterpoint to an exhausting 60-hour train ride to Hanoi to meet Trump. Still, having made all the rounds only to a wind up in a familiar place – impasse – defies reason.

Although greeted with scepticism, the Kim-Putin summit should be viewed as a positive – not a negative – development, a potential turning point and one area where Moscow could actually make a major contribution to international peace and security. Neither Russia nor Putin is a stranger to Korean affairs. Putin held multiple summits and negotiated a missile moratorium with Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, in 2000 while the former in its Soviet incarnation furnished the North with its only nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, starting the country on a nuclear trajectory.

Putin also put his finger on the central issue in emphasising the need to make explicit what was implicit in the Singapore summit communiqué between Trump and Kim: denuclearisation must be accomplished in tandem with “a stable and lasting peace regime”.

In promising to take up the issue with Xi in the near future, Putin has also assumed the mantle of mediator and diplomatic intermediary while making the case for a multilateral – rather than unilateral – approach, which makes sense given that the sanctions regime is monitored by the UN Security Council, with ultimate responsibility for sanctions relief as well as for coordinating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the denuclearisation process.

It also makes sense from a geopolitical and historical perspective. Both China and Russia border North Korea. Russia, in particular, both founded the regime and anointed Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, as leader of what has become the Kim dynasty, constituting a powerful political umbilical cord.

And while the former Soviet Union backed Kim Il-sung in his unsuccessful attempt to unify the Korean peninsula militarily in 1950, it was China that pulled his chestnuts out of the fire by intervening in the Korean war, temporarily eclipsing the former Soviet Union in Korean affairs in the post-Korean war period – though the North remained wary politically of long-term Chinese intentions vis-à-vis the Korean peninsula.

North Korea’s then-leader Kim Jong-il waves from the window of his armoured train at the Russian border railway station of Khasan, Russia in 2002. Kim, the late father of current leader Kim Jong-un, was born in Russia in 1941 while his father, regime founder Kim Il-sung, was in exile from Japanese-occupied Korea. Russia would later be one of just two countries Kim Jong-il visited as leader. Photo: AP

Russia has been on the sidelines for so long – the half-century since the end of the Korean war – that it’s hard to remember the major role it played in Korea historically in the late 19th and early 20th century. This included protecting the Korean king in Seoul’s Russian legation for a little more than 12 months in 1896-97 following the Korean queen’s assassination by Japanese agents, before Russia lost out to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) and Tokyo colonised the peninsula.

It also marked the end of Russian involvement in Korean affairs for the next four decades, only to be ushered back in the aftermath of the second world war, this time as a partner with the US in a dual military occupation with the goal of creating a sovereign, independent and democratic Korea, beginning with a unified administration to be followed by a trusteeship arrangement.

However, with the collapse of negotiations for a provisional government under trusteeship, the Korean problem made its way onto the agenda of the United Nations General Assembly, where Soviet-American disagreement over supervising elections under UN auspices led to a permanently divided peninsula, giving rise to the Korean war two years later, a civil war with a great power overlay in which the US and China were the principal outside combatants.

In the years since, and particularly during the six-party talks of 2003-2009, at which Russia was little more than a passive participant, Moscow took a back seat to Korean developments. More recently, it has been singled out for breaking commitments by employing North Korean labourers and clandestinely transferring sanctioned items, such as refined petroleum, at sea.

Russia could help chart a new course emphasising multilateral diplomacy with the participation of China and the US

What does Russia bring to the table now? Moscow could make a positive contribution in denuclearisation as one of several nuclear powers, including China and the US, with the expertise to participate in the immensely complicated undertaking of denuclearising North Korea.

It could also be a major contributor to the North’s economic renaissance, having long sought both a pipeline across North Korea to satisfy the South’s demand for oil and natural gas as well as a railroad linking Seoul with Vladivostok, the Trans-Siberian Railroad and a European Russia.

Finally, and most importantly, it could help chart a new course emphasising multilateral diplomacy with the participation of China and the US. This would not be return to six-party talks per se, but a focus on multilateral security guarantees in the context of the Singapore summit communiqué’s call for “a stable and lasting peace regime”.

John Barry Kotch is a political historian and former State Department consultant

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