Russia's Deepening Ties to North Korea: China's Gateway to the Arctic?

Recently, the Moscow Times reported that Russia would coordinate a deal with China and North Korea to allow Chinese ships to navigate through a seventeen-kilometer stretch of the Tumen River to the Rason Special Economic Zone (SEZ) on the Pacific coast. The Tumen forms the border between China and North Korea, but its final section marks the border between North Korea and Russia. This stretch of the river runs alongside the Rason SEZ, with the port city of Rason situated a few miles down the coast from the river’s mouth, where it empties into the Sea of Japan. The initiation of this deal took place following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in May and as Putin met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un in June. It comes against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine that Russia has been engaged in for over two years. As a result of the protracted conflict, Russia has drawn closer to North Korea in recent months, importing weapons from North Korea to fill its own depleted caches. And in fact, the Rason SEZ has evolved into a significant point of North Korea–Russia cooperation, recently implicated in North Korean arms shipments to Russia for use in Ukraine.

But the deal also has implications for a region far beyond Rason, and indeed beyond Ukraine. Isolated from the international community due to its aggressive war, Russian Arctic development has stagnated. Foreign capital investment proved inaccessible, with China being the only viable source of support left. With limited options to access the materiel it needs to continue its war, Putin was prompted to explore areas of cooperation with North Korea and extend long desired economic concessions to China in order to keep supply lines open for his military operations in Ukraine. This in turn offers China an opportunity to strengthen its position in the Arctic, as Russia’s military needs and its deepening military ties with North Korea can be leveraged by China to take steps toward its objective of becoming a “near-Arctic state.” Long excluded from substantive involvement in the Arctic by Russia, China is now poised to take advantage of the geopolitical exigencies that its neighbor faces.

Article published by The Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point

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