Both countries have long been adversaries with the DPRK. The Republic of Korea (RoK) since The Korean War and Japan since its brutal occupation of Korea in 1910. After the signing of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, both will have to deal with a stronger, less isolated DPRK which now has the backing of Russia.
“Recall that Japan has been lobbying Moscow incessantly for decades for the return of the Kuril Islands,” explained historian and author Dr. Gerald Horne on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour. “You see that Japan is staggered by the prospect that North Korea, which specializes in sending missiles into Japanese space, now has a formidable ally in the form of Moscow.”
On Thursday, the South Korean Foreign Ministry expressed regret over the deal. "We will sternly respond to any act threatening our security with the international community, including our allies, after conducting thorough analysis on [Putin’s] visit to North Korea and their comprehensive strategic partnership agreement," the ministry said in a statement.
Late last year, the Japanese government approved a record military budget, making it the third highest military spender in the world, after the US and China. Just a decade ago, Japan had a pacifist defense policy and would only use its military in direct self-defense. In 2014, that restriction was removed and Japan started expanding its military capabilities.
This “is not consoling to the DPRK,” added Horne. “No doubt [it] motivated this recent embrace of Moscow.”
For the RoK, the deal is near catastrophic. In September, the RoK pledged to give Ukraine $2.3 billion, a decision that was undoubtedly noticed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. “In a sense, Russia has struck back and has strengthened [the Rok’s] antagonist,” Horne noted.
Throughout June, the DPRK has floated balloons full of trash and used toilet paper over to the South Korean part of the peninsula. The action was in response to activists in South Korea sending balloons full of propaganda pamphlets and USB drives with South Korean television shows.
At a time when the reunification of Korea looks to be further than it has been in decades, North Korea is being strengthened, as US influence in the region is on the wane.
Ironically, the United States had an opportunity to reach out to North Korea and improve relations during the administration of Donald Trump, who visited with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his presidency.
"It is just ironic to me, all the negative press Trump got from the West when he did this in 2019," pondered The Critical Hour co-host Dr. Wilmer Leon. "It just makes me wonder where the Russian North Korean conversations would be today, if Trump had been able to further develop that rapport with Kim [Jong Um]."
“It is a strategic defeat for US imperialism in the sense that Russia is now strengthened diplomatically [and] perhaps even militarily,” Horne said.
“It is also a failure of the entire Cold War era, perpetrated and driven by US imperialism. That is to say that somehow Washington did not realize – I guess they did not study diplomatic history or political geography – that Russia, the largest country by territory on planet Earth, has been designed to play a major role in world politics be they led by communists in Moscow or non-communists in Moscow,” concluded Horne. “Now we see the validation of that particular thesis, because we see that Moscow [has been] resurrected.”