![]() Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: "KCNA" which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un acknowledges the officers and soldiers who took part in a celebration the 90th founding anniversary of the Korean People's Revolutionary Army, in North Korea Wednesday, April 27, 2022. He says Kim is likely to respond in only one way: by becoming “even more obsessed with his nuclear weapons and missile capabilities.” The Russian invasion will bolster that narrative, but in doing so it could also have a “very negative impact” on the mind of North Korea’s own strongman leader, according to Lee Sang-hyun, president and senior research fellow of the Sejong Institute. Both strongmen leaders lost their grips on power – and ultimately their own lives – after their own nuclear ambitions came grinding to a halt. Pyongyang regularly uses the experiences of Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi, the former leaders of Iraq and Libya, to justify its nuclear program, both to its own people and the world. “Now (the North Koreans) have got yet another confirmation (of this lesson) after Iraq, after Libya,” Lankov said. Most experts – and most likely Pyongyang too – think not. Would Moscow have invaded if Ukraine had kept its warheads? Ukraine now finds itself under brutal attack from the very same country that signed the deal to protect its sovereignty – one that now repeatedly refers to its nuclear arsenal to warn the West off intervention. It voluntarily handed these over to Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, as part of a 1994 deal with the United States, United Kingdom and Russia which would guarantee Ukraine’s security, a deal known as the Budapest Memorandum. When Ukraine was part of the USSR, it hosted thousands of nuclear warheads. ![]() Moscow’s invasion of its neighbor has reinforced a message that has been playing on Pyongyang’s mind for decades, Lankov said. KCNA/AFP/Getty ImagesĪ nuclear lesson, from Ukraine to Saddam and Gaddafi North Korea's intermediate-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 lifts off in 2017. “Never, ever surrender your nuclear weapons.” In the worst-case scenario, experts even wonder whether this is the start of a once unthinkable chain of events that could end with a return to inter-Korean conflict, perhaps even with the North invading the South – though most see this as highly unlikely.Īs professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University puts it, the lesson North Korea has learned from Russia’s war in Ukraine, is simple: ![]() What’s more, the boycott of Russian oil and gas could even open the door to cut-price energy deals between Pyongyang and Moscow – ideological allies whose friendship harks back to the Korean war of the 1950s. ![]() Not only will North Korea use Ukraine’s plight to bolster its narrative that it needs nukes to guarantee its survival, but leader Kim Jong Un may find that, with all eyes on the war in Europe, he can get away with more than ever.ĭivided over Ukraine, the international community will likely have little appetite for sanctions on the hermit kingdom indeed, even unified condemnation of a recent North Korean ICBM test remains elusive. In fact, analysts say, Moscow’s actions have gifted the reclusive Asian nation a “perfect storm” of conditions under which to ramp its program up. That one of the very few countries to have voluntarily given up a nuclear arsenal is now under attack from the same country it gave its warheads to will not be lost on Pyongyang. If North Korea was looking for another excuse to forge ahead with its nuclear weapons program, it just found one in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ![]()
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