Why North Korea Is Sitting on the Story of the Revolt in Russia

If there’s one story that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, would prefer to hide from his people, it’s that of a massive revolt against an entrenched regime.The North Korean press has yet to report on the short-lived defiance of the Wagner Group in Russia, but Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency did reveal its worries in a four-sentence dispatch that it’s repeated several times in recent days.In a meeting with the Russian ambassador to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, the North’s vice foreign minister, Im Chon-il, left no doubt of the North’s subservience to Moscow — and whom it supported in any contest with Russia’s President Putin.“During the talk,” said KCNA, in the English version of the story, Mr. Kim “expressed firm belief that the recent armed rebellion in Russia would be successfully put down in conformity with the aspiration and will of the Russian people.”The DPRK, he promised, “will strongly support any option and decision by the Russian leadership.”With those words, North Korea betrayed the same fears that it’s conveyed in carefully guarded mentions over the years of events ranging from the Arab Spring more than a decade ago to revolutions and revolts in eastern Europe.These tidings go unreported in the North’s state press until they’re widely known via broadcasts from South Korea, America and elsewhere that North Koreans may listen to surreptitiously, at the risk of arrest, torture and imprisonment. At some point the news gets around, and Pyongyang’s propaganda machine goes to work.In the case of Russia, the choice was rooted in basic needs. North Korea depends on food — notably wheat — that it imports for its impoverished people, as well as oil and natural gas, which it also gets from China.In return, as the State Department has charged, North Korea has shipped rockets and missiles to Russia. Products move back and forth across the North’s extremely brief border with Russia — 11 miles across the Tumen River and another 12 miles at sea. North Korea did not make a huge point of its support for Mr. Putin. Why let people know something really serious was going on? Still, the KCNA reported that Mr. Im had “expressed conviction that the strong Russian army and people would surely overcome trials and ordeals and heroically emerge victorious in the special military operation against Ukraine.”North Korea’s relations with Russia — and with the Wagner Group — may be still more complicated. The South Korean press has reported that the North may have been shipping munitions via the Wagner Group.“All this suggests that North Korea was keen to take advantage of the war, first, by selling Russia weapons during the conflict and then by taking part in its reconstruction,” reports the Korea Times in Seoul. That plan may have been “seriously — perhaps fatally — disrupted after the head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, initiated an open military rebellion,” said the paper.An expert with the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, Cho Han-bum, is quoted as saying it’s “very possible that North Korea made several deals with the group.” According to Mr. Cho, “cancellations of the deals would cause immediate damage to the regime.”

Why North Korea Is Sitting on the Story of the Revolt in Russia

Why North Korea Is Sitting on the Story of the Revolt in Russia

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