What is North Korea doing?

Seoul:

A failed satellite launch, floating hundreds of trash-filled balloons to the South and firing a volley of 10 short-range ballistic missiles: North Korea has had a busy week.

AFP takes a look at what’s going on:

What’s Driving Recent Actions?

The unrest could be seen as an angry response by Kim Jong Un’s regime to China, South Korea and Japan, experts say, specifically their joint statement this week targeting Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons.

The three countries held a rare summit on Monday, where they said they remained committed to the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

It’s a standard phrase that the trio — even Pyongyang’s main diplomatic ally and trading partner, China — has long used.

Kim Jong Un himself, at a high-level summit in 2018 in Singapore with then US President Donald Trump, signed a joint declaration committing to work towards the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula”.

And Kim was serious, former South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in a recent memoir, adding that he believed Pyongyang’s young leader would have abandoned his nuclear program “if there was a guarantee of the regime’s survival.”

So what has changed?

Since Kim’s second summit with Trump failed in Hanoi in 2019, North Korea has abandoned diplomacy, redoubling its focus on weapons development and rejecting Washington’s offers of talks.

It also revised its laws. Although Pyongyang first called itself a “nuclear weapons state” in its constitution in 2012, it passed a new law in 2022 that, according to Kim, made that status “irreversible”.

The law also outlined the command and control structure for the country’s nuclear weapons – with Kim firmly at the top – and specified the country’s right to “automatically” carry out preemptive strikes if threatened.

The new status was formally enshrined in North Korea’s constitution in 2023.

This week, he said efforts to dismantle the country’s nuclear arsenal amounted to denying the country’s “constitutional position” and a “serious political provocation.”

Message for Beijing?

North Korea shows its “discomfort towards China” by allowing denuclearization to be included in the joint declaration with Japan and the South, Yang Moo-jin, president of Seoul University of North Korean Studies, told AFP.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has previously condemned North Korea’s nuclear tests and supported sanctions. But as Beijing’s relations with Washington have deteriorated, the country has increasingly obstructed U.S.-led efforts to impose tougher sanctions, while blaming joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises for escalating regional tensions. .

Still, Pyongyang “may have been dissatisfied with Beijing’s position” at this week’s summit, Yang said, adding that Kim may have felt that “China was being too ‘passive’ and therefore was not doing enough for them.”

And the balloons?

South Korean activists have long sent balloons filled with anti-Kim propaganda, money and even USBs of television dramas to the North, infuriating Pyongyang, which recently promised to retaliate in kind.

From Tuesday night to Wednesday, the North sent about 260 balloons carrying bags of trash, including batteries, toilet paper and plastic waste, to South Korea.

Initial reports claimed there was animal feces in the trash bags, generating “poop” headlines, but the Seoul military later said it believed the organic matter was “not manure made from fecal matter.”

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un mocked Seoul for complaining, saying the country’s citizens were simply exercising their freedom of speech – a justification Seoul has given in the past for activists’ actions.

What’s next?

North Korea is increasingly closer to Russia, said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, pointing to Monday’s failed satellite launch.

The attempt “used new technologies, such as liquefied oxygen and kerosene, which are mainly used by Russia,” he said, adding that this shows that the North is trying to move forward and apply Moscow’s technical assistance.

Seoul has accused the North of sending weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine in exchange for satellite aid.

China may also have a window to move closer to South Korea later this year if Trump is re-elected as US president, said Lee Dong-gyu, a researcher at the Asan Institute.

Cracks could then emerge in the so-called “firm” U.S.-South Korea security alliance, he said, which would give China an opening “to expand its influence in South Korea by leveraging the North Korean issue,” he added.

(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)