Excerpts:

Strengthening cooperation with China is the only way to minimize the damage dealt by strategic and tactical cooperation between North Korea and Russia

In an essay published in Foreign Policy on Sept. 12, Siegfried Hecker, a longtime observer of North Korea, characterized Kim’s overture toward Russia as “neither tactical nor desperate” but a “result of a fundamental shift in North Korean policy, finally abandoning a 30-year effort to normalize relations with the US.”

What should South Korea’s next move be? As the details of the agreement made between North Korea and Russia have not been made public, various opinions are being put forth. Progressives say that “North Korea has emerged as a formidable actor on the international stage” (Cheong Wook-sik, director of the Hankyoreh Peace Institute) and are demanding that the Yoon Suk-yeol administration should “course-correct” its diplomacy, which is oriented toward blindly following the US and uncritically antagonizing North Korea (Park Noja, professor at the University of Oslo).

In contrast, conservatives are propounding the radical notion that Seoul’s principle against providing lethal weapons to Ukraine should be reconsidered, and scrapping both the Sept. 19 Pyongyang Declaration and the Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula should seriously be contemplated (Lee Yong-joon, chairperson of the Sejong Institute).

While the proposals from progressives seem to have a more cool-headed grasp on today’s international affairs, the Yoon administration will not accept them. Still, putting to practice conservatives’ suggestion to send weapons to Ukraine would also be difficult. Objectively, the tactical and strategic cooperation that Pyongyang and Moscow will carry out moving forward has become a painful diplomatic constant that Seoul can’t really do anything with.

Strengthening cooperation with China is the only way to minimize the damage.

During his meeting with South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, Chinese President Xi Jinping also stated that Beijing would maintain a policy of “good-neighborliness and friendship toward South Korea,” conveying his intent not to come together with Pyongyang and Moscow in relatively straightforward language.

Closening ties between North Korea and Russia should be considered a seismic shift in geopolitics that unsettles regional affairs. Hence, maintaining the stability of South Korea-China relations has become an even more vital interest for Seoul than before.

Moreover, the outcome of next year’s presidential election in the US is hard to anticipate. South Korea shouldn’t stick its neck out across the battlefront of strategic competition between the US and China like a reckless rifleman. Yoon may go down in history as a figure who ruined South Korean diplomacy if he misreads the cards and destroys relations with China once again.