Shared problems push North Korea into Russia's arms

For diplomat Im Cheon Il, there has never been a better time to invite Russian children to spend their holidays at a North Korean youth camp.

"The political relationship between our countries is developing more productively than ever before," said Mr Im, an envoy based in eastern Russia, after making the proposal this week to officials from the northeastern territory of Yakutia, which published the remarks on its website.

He is one of many to have observed a marked deepening of ties between the countries, as shared diplomatic and economic problems push them into each other's arms.

Russia has stepped up economic co-operation with North Korea as part of its "Look East" policy, which has been lent urgency by its growing diplomatic and economic isolation from the west. A beneficiary of Soviet largesse during the Cold War, North Korea has enthusiastically welcomed Moscow's attentions, designating 2015 a year of friendship with Russia as it seeks to attract direly needed investment and ease an overwhelming economic reliance on Beijing.

A symbolic crowning of this trend looks set to come next month, when Kim Jong Un is expected to make his first foreign trip as North Korea's leader to attend a Moscow parade that will mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war.

In March Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said the North Korean leader had accepted the invitation to the parade - although sceptical officials in Seoul have pointed out that the word "leader" might apply to the nominal head of state Kim Yong Nam, and North Korea's official media has been silent on the subject.

Yet Mr Kim's visit would be just the latest stage in a flurry of high-level contact between the two nations this year.

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These meetings have yielded tangible results, notes Alexey Maslov at Moscow's National Research University, contrasting it with the previous pattern of "political decoration without economic content".

The most important agreement was sealed in October, when Russia agreed to refurbish 3,500km of North Korean rail track in exchange for access to coal and other minerals.

Pyongyang's decision to open its abundant mineral resources to Russia follows signs of frustration at its dependence on China for demand and investment in this area.

Jang Song Thaek, Mr Kim's uncle and top adviser who had led economic engagement with China, was accused of "selling off precious resources of the country at cheap prices" before his execution for treason in December 2013. North Korea has received significantly lower rates of payment than other exporters for its shipments to China of minerals such as zinc and lead, according to Kevin Stahler at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The rail upgrade would follow Russia's completion in September 2013 of a rail link connecting its eastern city of Kazan with Rason, a North Korean special economic zone where Russia has sole use of one of the port's three piers.

"North Korea is the gateway to South Korea and other Asian markets," says Georgy Toloraya, head of Korean programmes at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "The railroad takes us to the Pacific coal market; if things go to plan, we might get shipments of South Korean and Japanese containers, which could revive the trans-Siberian railway."

Russia has sought where possible to include both Koreas in its projects on the peninsula, in a long-term bet on their eventual rapprochement and perhaps unification. In November a pilot shipment of coal was transported from Russia to South Korea via Rason in what is hoped to become a full-scale trading link, while Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed the potential for a gas pipeline running the length of the Korean peninsula during a visit to Seoul in 2013.

The deepening relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang has drawn scepticism in Seoul, however. In a speech last month Hwang Joon-kook, South Korea's special envoy for security on the peninsula, suggested that Pyongyang could try to use Russia as "leverage" in its relationship with China. This would echo the strategy pursued by North Korea's founding leader Kim Il Sung, who sought to exploit the Sino-Soviet split to extract assistance from both sides.

But "Russia is not in a position to expand economic co-operation with North Korea", Mr Hwang argued, pointing to the impact on Moscow of sanctions and low oil prices, as well as its reluctance to jeopardise relations with China.

Russia has nonetheless been stepping up direct economic support for North Korea, last year starting delivery of 50,000 tonnes of food aid - helping to repair the damage done to relations in the early 1990s when Russia began to insist on direct payment for goods, one factor behind the famine that subsequently swept North Korea. It also ended years of wrangling over $11bn of North Korean debt dating back to Soviet days, writing off $10bn last year and earmarking the remainder for investment in joint economic projects.

However, there will be no return to the Soviet largesse of old, argues Andrei Lankov, a professor at Seoul's Kookmin University. "The North Koreans read too much of the western press - they read that Russia is becoming the new Soviet Union, and they assume this means it will behave like the Soviet Union," he says. "But they will soon discover that the Russians will invest money only if they see clear chances of profits."

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