North Korea's troop deployment to Ukraine could test Beijing-Pyongyang ties

WASHINGTON — 

As Ukraine braces to face North Korean troops who are believed to be in the Russian border region of Kursk, analysts say China should be concerned about stronger pressure and responses from NATO, which sees Beijing as an enabler of Pyongyang and a supporter of Russia's war against Ukraine.

South Korea's National Intelligence Agency said on Tuesday it has obtained information that North Korean troops are moving to the front lines of the war in Russia near Ukraine.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Monday that North Korean military units have been deployed to Russia's western border region of Kursk. He made the remark after a South Korean delegation briefed NATO, Australia, Japan and New Zealand on North Korea's involvement in Russia's war against Ukraine.

Rutte continued that North Korea's troop dispatch, in addition to shipments of ammunition and ballistic missiles, represents "a dangerous expansion of Russia's war" that threatens both Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic security.

In return for North Korean troops and weapons, Moscow is providing Pyongyang with "military technology and other support to circumvent international sanctions," Rutte added.

The U.S. estimates that North Korea sent about 10,000 soldiers to train in eastern Russia.

North Korea said on Friday that "if there is such a thing" as North Korea troops in Russia, "it will be an act conforming with the regulation of international law."

Growing signs of strain

Analysts say North Korea's commitment of troops to help Russia would further strain its relations with China, which undoubtedly will dislike the development that would lead to the strengthening of NATO's ties with South Korea.

"China should be concerned about NATO paying more attention to North Korea, especially since many NATO member countries see Beijing as Pyongyang's enabler," Ramon Pacheco Pardo, who was part of European Union delegations to previous talks with North Korea, South Korea, China and Japan, told VOA on Friday.

North Korea's troop dispatch will lead NATO to focus further on Pyongyang's cyber activities and nuclear and missile programs and proliferation, and this can have "a knock-on effect on China," continued Pacheco Pardo, a professor of international relations at King's College London.

"China can't afford to sever ties with North Korea, due to its own security interests. So, Beijing has to endure North Korea siding with Russia and being labeled as part of an axis of authoritarian revisionist states, even if it doesn't like this label," he added.

Earlier in October, NATO held talks with its Asian partners to enhance the security link between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, expressing concern over countries such as China and North Korea that can become "security spoilers" in their "backyard."

Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, told VOA on Friday that Beijing is uneasy about Moscow's growing influence in the region through military cooperation with Pyongyang.

He said China tolerated North Korea's sending munitions to Russia because it viewed that as having "a limited time frame," but after North Korea's troop deployment, Beijing is concerned about their long-term ties contributing to Moscow's growth as a dominant power in East Asia, which threatens Beijing's view of itself as playing that role.

Responding to VOA's inquiry on the development of North Korea-Russia military cooperation, the Chinese Embassy in Washington on Tuesday sent a statement saying Beijing hopes "all parties will promote the de-escalation of the situation and strive for a political settlement."

Keeping the status quo

Chinese President Xi Jinping, while attending the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, on October 23, said there is a need to stop "adding fuel to the fire" in the Ukraine crisis without mentioning specific countries.

Beijing, seeing North Korea as a buffer zone between its mainland and U.S. forces stationed in South Korea, has long been Pyongyang's main ally as the biggest trading partner. To prevent it from becoming unstable, China has maintained the economic lifeline of the regime that is heavily sanctioned and closed off from the global economy.

But trouble in their bilateral ties seemed to begin when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Russia last year and were exacerbated when Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defense treaty in Pyongyang this summer.

The latest development in the deepening military relations between Pyongyang and Moscow could "complicate Beijing's own plans to have it both ways in the Russia-Ukraine war," according to Roy Kamphausen, a senior fellow for Chinese security at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Kamphausen said on Friday that China wants to "support Russia enough" so Moscow "can win slowly" but "avoid too much blowback, especially economic sanctions on China itself."

He added, "Escalation in the current conflict which comes from Asia itself might have the negative impact of putting more pressure on Beijing itself, just what it wants to avoid."

The U.S. earlier this month sanctioned China-based companies for collaborating with Russia to produce drones for use against Ukraine.

Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation, told VOA on Friday that "Beijing would see little benefit to establish a more formal trilateral alliance because being too closely linked to Russian and North Korean provocative behavior could trigger secondary sanctions against China."

China in 2023 was the largest trading partner for EU imports and third largest for EU exports.