John Barry Kotch

Russia has much to offer the Korean peace process, from denuclearisation expertise to experience as a mediator

Russia has been sidelined in the Korean peace process so long that it’s easy to forget its historical role on the peninsula. The Kim-Putin meeting was a reminder of the major role Moscow could again play

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands prior to their talks in Vladivostok on April 25. Photo: EPA-EFE

John Barry Kotch

Published: 3:00am, 1 May 2019Updated: 3:00am, 1 May 2019

Six years as a recluse consolidating power, often in unsavory ways, while perfecting the country’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles along the way, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has since come out of isolation, giving new meaning to the 1960s Beach Boys hit, I Get Around.

In the last 16 months, he has met four times with China’s President Xi Jinping, three times with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in, twice with US President Donald Trump and finally with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, the latter just across the Russian-North Korean border in Vladivostok, in counterpoint to an exhausting 60-hour train ride to Hanoi to meet Trump. Still, having made all the rounds only to a wind up in a familiar place – impasse – defies reason.

Although greeted with scepticism, the Kim-Putin summit should be viewed as a positive – not a negative – development, a potential turning point and one area where Moscow could actually make a major contribution to international peace and security. Neither Russia nor Putin is a stranger to Korean affairs. Putin held multiple summits and negotiated a missile moratorium with Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, in 2000 while the former in its Soviet incarnation furnished the North with its only nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, starting the country on a nuclear trajectory.

Putin also put his finger on the central issue in emphasising the need to make explicit what was implicit in the Singapore summit communiqué between Trump and Kim: denuclearisation must be accomplished in tandem with “a stable and lasting peace regime”.

In promising to take up the issue with Xi in the near future, Putin has also assumed the mantle of mediator and diplomatic intermediary while making the case for a multilateral – rather than unilateral – approach, which makes sense given that the sanctions regime is monitored by the UN Security Council, with ultimate responsibility for sanctions relief as well as for coordinating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in the denuclearisation process.