Russian Ambassador to South Korea Georgy Zinoviev arrives at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, June 21, 2024. South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador to protest a defense pact with North Korea on Friday, two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement vowing mutual defense with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on a state visit to Pyongyang.
| Photo Credit: AP

South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador to protest a defense pact with North Korea on June 21, two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement vowing mutual defense with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on a state visit to Pyongyang.

Earlier Friday, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued a vague threat of retaliation after South Korean activists flew balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border, and South Korea’s military said it had fired warning shots the previous day to repel North Korean soldiers who briefly crossed the rivals’ land border for the third time this month.

That came two days after Moscow and Pyongyang reached a pact vowing mutual defense assistance if either is attacked, and a day after Seoul responded by saying it would consider providing arms to Ukraine to fight Russia’s invasion.

South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong Kyun summoned Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev to convey Seoul’s stance on the deal between Putin and Kim and on alleged military cooperation between Russia and North Korea. Seoul’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately confirm what was said during the meeting.

Leafletting campaigns by South Korean civilian activists in recent weeks have prompted a resumption of Cold War-style psychological warfare along the inter-Korean border.

The South Korean civilian activists, led by North Korean defector Park Sang-hak, said it sent 20 balloons carrying 300,000 propaganda leaflets, 5,000 USB sticks with South Korean pop songs and TV dramas, and 3,000 U.S. dollar bills from the South Korean border town of Paju on Thursday night.

Pyongyang resents such material and fears it could demoralize front-line troops and residents and eventually weaken Kim Jong Un’s grip on power, analysts say.

In a statement carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Kim Yo Jong, one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, called the activists “defector scum” and issued what appeared to be a threat of retaliation.

“When you do something you were clearly warned not to do, it’s only natural that you will find yourself dealing with something you didn’t have to,” she said, without specifying what the North would do.

After previous leafletting by South Korean activists, North Korea launched more than 1,000 balloons that dropped tons of trash in South Korea, smashing roof tiles and windows and causing other property damage. Kim Yo Jong previously hinted that balloons could become the North’s standard response to leafletting, saying that the North would respond by “scattering dozens of times more rubbish than is being scattered on us.”

In response, South Korea resumed anti-North Korea propaganda broadcasts with military loudspeakers installed at the border for the first time in years, to which Kim Yo Jong, in another state media statement, warned that Seoul was “creating a prelude to a very dangerous situation.”

Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest in years as Kim Jong Un accelerates his nuclear weapons and missile development and attempts to strengthen his regional footing by aligning with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a standoff against the U.S.-led West.

South Korea, a growing arms exporter with a well-equipped military backed by the United States, says it is considering upping support for Ukraine in response. Seoul has already provided humanitarian aid and other support while joining U.S.-led economic sanctions against Moscow. But it has not directly provided arms, citing a long-standing policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflict.

Putin told reporters in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Thursday that supplying weapons to Ukraine would be “a very big mistake,” and said South Korea “shouldn’t worry” about the agreement if it isn’t planning aggression against Pyongyang.

North Korea is extremely sensitive to criticism of Kim’s authoritarian rule and efforts to reach its people with foreign news and other media.

In 2015, when South Korea restarted loudspeaker broadcasts for the first time in 11 years, North Korea fired artillery rounds across the border, prompting South Korea to return fire, according to South Korean officials. No casualties were reported.

South Korea’s military said there are signs that North Korea was installing its own speakers at the border, although they weren’t yet working.

In the latest border incident, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said several North Korean soldiers engaged in unspecified construction work briefly crossed the military demarcation line that divides the two countries at around 11 a.m. Thursday.

The South Korean military broadcast a warning and fired warning shots, after which the North Korean soldiers retreated. The joint chiefs didn’t immediately release more details, including why it was releasing the information a day late.

South Korea’s military says believes recent border intrusions were not intentional, as the North Korean soldiers have not returned fire and retreated after the warning shots.

The South’s military has observed the North deploying large numbers of soldiers in frontline areas to build suspected anti-tank barriers, reinforce roads and plant mines in an apparent attempt to fortify their side of the border. Seoul believes the efforts are likely aimed at preventing North Korean civilians and soldiers from escaping to the South.

Russia and North Korea confirmed on September 11 that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will visit Russia in a highly anticipated meeting with President Vladimir Putin that has sparked Western concerns about a potential arms deal for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

A brief statement on the Kremlin’s website said Mr. Kim’s visit is at Mr. Putin’s invitation and would take place “in the coming days.” The visit also was reported by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, which said the leaders would meet — without specifying when and where.

Associated Press journalists near the North Korea-Russia frontier saw a green train with yellow trim — similar to the train used by Mr. Kim during previous foreign trips — at a station on the North Korean side of a border river.

It was unclear whether Mr. Kim was on the train, which was seen moving back and forth between the station and the approach to the bridge that connects the countries. It had not crossed the bridge as of 7 p.m. (1000 GMT).

Citing unidentified South Korean government sources, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the train likely left the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on Sunday evening and that a Kim-Putin meeting is possible as early as Tuesday.

The Yonhap news agency and some other media published similar reports. Japan’s Kyodo news agency cited Russian officials as saying Kim was possibly heading for Russia in his personal train.

South Korea’s Presidential Office, Defense Ministry and National Intelligence Service didn’t immediately confirm those details.

U.S. officials released intelligence last week that North Korea and Russia were arranging a meeting between their leaders that would take place within this month as they expand their cooperation in the face of deepening confrontations with the United States. A possible venue for the meeting is the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok, where Mr. Putin arrived Monday to attend an international forum that runs through Wednesday, according to Russia’s TASS news agency. The city was also the site of Mr. Putin’s first meeting with Mr. Kim in 2019. According to U.S. officials, Mr. Putin could focus on securing more supplies of North Korean artillery and other ammunition to refill declining reserves as he seeks to defuse a Ukrainian counteroffensive and show that he’s capable of grinding out a long war of attrition. That could potentially put more pressure on the United States and its partners to pursue negotiations as concerns over a protracted conflict grow despite their huge shipments of advanced weaponry to Ukraine in the past 17 months.

North Korea has possibly tens of millions of artillery shells and rockets based on Soviet designs that could potentially give a huge boost to the Russian army, analysts say.

In exchange, Mr. Kim could seek badly needed energy and food aid and advanced weapons technologies, including those related to intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarines and military reconnaissance satellites, analysts say.

There are concerns that potential Russian technology transfers would increase the threat posed by Mr. Kim’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles that are designed to target the U.S., South Korea, and Japan.

After a complicated, hot-and-cold relationship for decades, Russia and North Korea have been drawing closer since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The bond has been driven by Mr. Putin’s need for war help and Kim’s efforts to boost the visibility of his partnerships with traditional allies Moscow and Beijing as he tries to break out of diplomatic isolation and have North Korea be part of a united front against Washington.

While using the distraction caused by the Ukraine conflict to ramp up its weapons development, North Korea has repeatedly blamed Washington for the crisis in Ukraine, claiming the West’s “hegemonic policy” justified a Russian offensive in Ukraine to protect itself.

North Korea is the only nation besides Russia and Syria to recognize the independence of two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine — Donetsk and Luhansk — and it has also hinted at an interest in sending construction workers to those areas to help with rebuilding efforts.

Russia — along with China — have blocked U.S.-led efforts at the U.N. Security Council to strengthen sanctions on North Korea over its intensifying missile tests while accusing Washington of worsening tensions with Pyongyang by expanding military exercises with South Korea and Japan.

The United States has been accusing North Korea since last year of providing Russia with arms, including artillery shells sold to the Russian mercenary group Wagner. Both Russian and North Korean officials denied such claims. But speculation about the countries’ military cooperation grew after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made a rare visit to North Korea in July, when Mr. Kim invited him to an arms exhibition and a massive military parade in the capital where he showcased ICBMs designed to target the U.S. mainland.

Following that visit, Mr. Kim toured North Korea’s weapons factories, including a facility producing artillery systems where he urged workers to speed up the development and large-scale production of new kinds of ammunition. Experts say Kim’s visits to the factories likely had a dual goal of encouraging the modernization of North Korean weaponry and examining artillery and other supplies that could possibly be exported to Russia.

Jon Finer, U.S. President Joe Biden’s chief deputy national security adviser, told reporters Sunday that buying weapons from North Korea “may be the best and may be the only option” open to Moscow as it tries to keep its war effort going.

“We have serious concerns about the prospect of North Korea potentially selling weapons, additional weapons, to the Russian military. It is interesting to reflect for a minute on what it says that when Russia goes around the world looking for partners that can help it, it lands on North Korea,” Mr. Finer said aboard a plane carrying Biden from India to Vietnam.

Some analysts say a potential meeting between Mr. Kim and Mr. Putin would be more about symbolic gains than substantial military cooperation.

Russia, which has always closely guarded its most important weapons technologies, even from key allies such as China, could be unwilling to make major technology transfers with North Korea for what is likely to be limited war supplies transported over a small rail link between the countries, they say.