January 30th saw North Korea making sure the month ended with the globe knowing just how much they mean business. With a visit to Seoul South Korea from Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General already underway, Kim Tong-Myong, a researcher of the North’s organization on international political study took to Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) to voice his concerns.
Calling her visit a provocation towards an Asian version of NATO, Kim was not happy with the visit. “The trip of the NATO secretary general to South Korea and Japan is a prelude to confrontation and war as it brings the dark clouds of a ‘new Cold War’ to the Asia-Pacific region.”
Arriving on Sunday, Stoltenberg would only be in Seoul for two days, and while meeting with Foreign Minister Park Jin, Stoltenberg said the way the North had been supporting Russia in their war efforts served to reinforce the need for the rest of the world to be “interconnected” in any and all security efforts.
According to Kim, the visit by Stolenberg was more like a head of a military organization was visiting, and was only there to turn Ukraine into a “theatre of proxy war.” He is under the belief that Stoltenberg will turn this into an Asian NATO by putting pressure on Seoul and Tokyo for more support to Ukraine since the US is already supplying them with tanks.
Last week Kim claimed that the pledge of 31 M1 Abrams tanks being sent to Ukraine was a move that allowed Washington to cross the “red line.” Given the formal recognition of the Russian separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, this kind of decree isn’t surprising in the least. As only the third country behind Russia and Syria to recognize them, they are on a very short and very disastrous list given the current situation.
The idea of going back to a cold war with Russia either directly due to or as a byproduct of one with North Korea is a disastrous one for the US. As we are just starting to get the country back under control following COVID and with the combination of Biden’s disastrous leadership this cold war could heat up very quickly.
Given Putin’s commitments to China’s President Xi Jinping, as well as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, the three nations are completely connected and, in a sense, reliant on one another. Between trade sanctions, conflicts with other nations, and poor ability to be honest about their situations, these three outcasts are doing their best to try and put pressure on the world to do their bidding. A mission like this usually ends disastrously, but thankfully thus far they have been presenting their views without turning out the arms races.
While Kim is not a high-ranking “Deputy” or “Director” of anything in North Korea, the message from this unassuming character leaves a lot of questions to be answered. Mostly about how Kim Jong Un is looking at this situation, and how he might take any perceived threat. This is an incredibly in-depth problem, with some deep solutions here: https://youtu.be/6ATsDVPQGuk.
