The new agreement reached by the leaders of Russia and North Korea obliges the two countries to provide immediate military assistance using all available means in the event of war, North Korean state media reported.
North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency on Thursday carried the text of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement agreed upon by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang on Wednesday. According to the agency, Article 4 of the agreement stipulates that if either country is invaded and plunged into a state of war, the other country must provide military and other assistance “without delay and by all means.”
The agreement could mark the strongest ties between Moscow and Pyongyang since the end of the Cold War.
Both Kim Jong Un and Putin described this as a major upgrade in ties between the two countries, including security, trade, investment, cultural and humanitarian ties.
The summit comes as the United States and its allies grow concerned about a possible arms deal in which North Korea would provide Moscow with military hardware needed for the Ukraine war in exchange for economic aid and technology transfers that could pose a threat to Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
After the summit, Kim said the two countries had a “warm friendship” and that the agreement was the “strongest treaty ever” between them, bringing relations to the level of an alliance.
He vowed to fully support Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Putin called it a “landmark document” that reflected a shared desire to take ties between the two countries to a higher level.
North Korea and the former Soviet Union signed a treaty in 1961 that experts say would require Moscow to intervene militarily if North Korea were attacked.
The agreement was scrapped after the collapse of the Soviet Union and replaced in 2000 with one that offered weaker security guarantees.
South Korean officials said they were still interpreting the results of the summit, including how Russia would respond if North Korea was attacked and whether the new agreement would promise the same level of protections as the 1961 treaty.
South Korean officials did not immediately comment on the North Korean reports about the details of the agreement.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are at their highest in years, with Kim Jong Un’s weapons tests and the pace of joint military drills by the United States, South Korea and Japan intensifying amid a cycle of tit-for-tat.
The two Koreas have also engaged in Cold War-style psychological warfare, with North Korea dropping tons of garbage into South Korea using balloons and South Korea broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda over loudspeakers.
