Kim Jong-un, Traveling in an Armored Choo-Choo Packed With Security Aides and Electronic Gear, Crosses Into Russia To Parley With Putin at Vladivostok

SEOUL — Kim Jong-un is now in Russia for what could turn out to be a momentous meeting with President Putin that could rescue both their countries from disaster.Mr. Putin is counting on the visit winding up Wednesday with an agreement for North Korea to provide artillery shells needed to maintain an invasion that’s costing Moscow more, in terms of lives and ammunition, than it anticipated. As Mr. Kim’s armored choo-choo, filled with his top aides and security guards and packed with high-tech electronic gear, crossed the Russian-North Korean border en route to the Far Eastern port of Vladivostok, he could anticipate fresh guarantees of resources to battle the poverty and hunger that threaten to overwhelm his country.For Mr. Kim, the reward will be Russian technological expertise for some of his sophisticated weaponry as well as shipments of oil and food needed to supplement supplies on which it’s otherwise dependent on China. “Putin can save Kim from the depths of his trouble at home,” an analyst of North Korean issues, Shim Jae-hoon, tells the Sun. “He can provide Russian energy (oil) to help run North Korean factories, provide grains to feed hungry North Koreans and thus save them from another famine.”The North Korean party boss, Kim Jong-un and President Putin at Vladivostok, April 25, 2019. AP/Alexander Zemlianichenko, pool, fileThe deal, says Mr. Shim, will enable Mr. Kim “to keep his conventional arms factories running, producing artillery shells, howitzers, tanks, drones. “Ultimately,” he said, “Putin and Kim are on a disastrous course of triggering serious, new tensions in East Asia.”Russian desperation for North Korean munitions is such that Mr. Kim is in a far better bargaining position than he was when he first met Mr. Putin in Vladivostok more than four years ago.North Korea at that meeting was a supplicant, “seeking Russian assistance,” another analyst, Bruce Bennett of the Rand Corporation, tells the Sun. “This time, Russia is seeking North Korean assistance with conventional munitions.” North Korea “will inevitably demand substantial Russian compensation for doing so.”With Russia “now the one seeking assistance,” Mr. Bennett predicts that Mr. Putin “may be far more prepared to provide North Korea with things like nuclear submarine design, nuclear weapon design, satellite technology, and other technology that Kim very much wants” in addition to food, oil, and other desperately needed commodities.Russian assistance, said Mr. Bennett, may go so far as to include the technology for miniaturizing nuclear warheads so they can fit on the tips of the intercontinental ballistic missiles that Mr. Kim has already tested this year. “Advanced weapon technologies,” he said, “would be highly valued by the North and become a problem for the United States in many ways.”The dangers explain why American officials have been warning against any deal for North Korea to provide weapons for the Russians or for Russia to reciprocate with weapons or even oil and other vital supplies. The agreement that Messrs. Putin and Kim have been negotiating for weeks — via meetings with intermediaries, including Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu — are all in violation of UN sanctions that Russia had endorsed before its invasion of Ukraine.For Russia, a deal is all the more attractive since the North is willing to sell weapons for less than it costs to make them in Russia. It’s as though Russian weapons experts had been shopping in a bargain basement as they looked over the North Korean inventory. The fact that they’ve been in storage for years is not a deterrent when it comes to basic materiel, as explained by the author of five books and numerous articles on North Korea, Bruce Bechtol, in a recent article. “The systems and ammo the North Koreans have supplied are all old, 1960s-era Soviet weaponry,” Mr. Bechtol wrote. “But the Russian army is a blunt instrument, not a force using precision weapons for the most part. That means these systems are very useful for Russian forces slogging it out on battlefields, particularly in Eastern Ukraine.”It “was also important to note,” he added, “that the factories in North Korea that build the systems and produce the ammo were originally installed by the Soviets.” That was during the era of Soviet rule. “These systems are thus fully compatible with the systems Russia is using today in Ukraine.” It would be a mistake, though, to assume that all North Korea’s munitions are old and possibly unreliable. “North Koreans also have factories that actively produce new combat systems, and munitions factories that produce millions of shells annually,” said Mr. Bechtol. “ So to say these weapons and ammo might break down because of age is probably not accurate” A retired American diplomat with years of experience in Korea and Japan, Evans Revere, puts the Vladivostok summit in the context of a mutual effort by Russia and China “to undermine and, if possible, end the U.S.-led liberal international order and alliance system.” Moscow and Beijing “value the role that North Korea plays in complicating the U.S. security calculus in Northeast Asia.” North Korea is in the enviable position of extracting benefits from both of them. “North Korea is eager to maximize Russian and Chinese support for its faltering economy,” Mr. Revere tells the Sun. “So Pyongyang is bending over backwards to be seen as a good partner and ally to Russia and China.”

Kim Jong-un, Traveling in an Armored Choo-Choo Packed With Security Aides and Electronic Gear, Crosses Into Russia To Parley With Putin at Vladivostok

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