MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
China and North Korea vowed to breathe new life into their alliance at a summit in Pyongyang today. China's leader Xi Jinping visited North Korea for the first time in nearly seven years. He was greeted with a lavish welcome.
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KELLY: That welcome and the visit come at a time when North Korea has been prioritizing diplomatic relations with Russia. So to help us understand what this means, we are joined by NPR's Anthony Kuhn who is in Seoul. Hi, Anthony.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: And Jennifer Pak in Shanghai. Hi to you.
JENNIFER PAK, BYLINE: Howdy ho.
KELLY: Hey. So, Anthony, I will let you kick us off with a basic question. What was Kim Jong Un, North Korea's leader, trying to achieve in this meeting with President Xi?
KUHN: It looks like he is trying to recalibrate and rebalance his ties between his traditional ally, China, and his newer one, Russia, and he appears to have done that. He signed a mutual defense pact with Russia two years ago, and he sent troops to help them fight Ukraine. But Kim told Xi Jinping that developing ties with China is now his country's top strategic undertaking. Now, Kim is usually quite careful not to offend China, but just before Xi arrived in Pyongyang, Kim unveiled a previously unknown uranium enrichment facility. And he claimed that he had more than doubled nuclear fuel production in the past five years and would increase his missile production capacity by 150% in the next five years. And some experts see this as a bold bid to force Xi Jinping to tacitly accept North Korea as a de facto nuclear state. And indeed, neither side in the summit publicly mentioned the nuclear issue, so some experts believe Kim succeeded.
KELLY: OK, a bid to force China to tacitly accept North Korea as a nuclear state - Jennifer, hop in on that. Is China worried about North Korea's nuclear program?
PAK: China thinks that North Korea's nuclear issue is mainly a problem for the U.S. and South Korea more than for itself. And that's according to a nuclear expert Tong Zhao at the think tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He says China doesn't see why it needs to stick its neck out on behalf of the U.S. or South Korea.
TONG ZHAO: Especially when China now focuses on competition with the United States.
PAK: Same time, he said, by China tacitly accepting the reality of a nuclear North Korea, it could also increase the risk of other countries in the region wanting their own nuclear capabilities and then pushing Japan and South Korea to strengthen their security relations with Washington.
KUHN: Mary Louise, let's just remember that this has been actually happening for some time. In 2023, then-President Biden met with the leaders of Japan and South Korea, and they pledged to step up three-way military cooperation. And that was a key factor in Moscow and Beijing's decision that year to stop calling for North Korea's denuclearization.
KELLY: Interesting. To broaden this out a little bit, if Kim Jong Un feels confident, as you seem to be telling me, about his relationships with both Moscow and Beijing, what might that tell us about his ambitions going forward?
KUHN: Well, Kim is looking quite confident now that foreign leaders really have no choice but to accept his nuclear status, which could make him look like less of the head of a rogue regime. I spoke to Choo Jaewoo, who's a China foreign policy expert at Kyung Hee University just outside Seoul, and he described Kim Jong Un's growing ambitions like this.
CHOO JAEWOO: He would like to take North Korea to become a normal state. And in the diplomatic context, he was really specific about North Korea playing a leadership role, a contributor to the building of new international order.
KUHN: So when China, Russia and North Korea say a new international order, they mean a fair and just order in contrast to, say, the U.S. and Western-led international order, which to them, has always been about imperialism and unilateralism.
KELLY: I mean, from where you sit in Shanghai, Jennifer, China's view on this closer relationship that North Korea has been forging with Russia, how do they view it?
PAK: Well, China prizes stability above all, and that includes North Korea's regime not collapsing, going into famine, having refugees pouring over its borders. But China is skeptical of warmer ties between Moscow and Pyongyang. To Beijing, North Korea's pivoting to Russia may reduce China's influence on North Korea. Now, this is important for Beijing, especially on the nuclear issue. It also explains why Xi went to Pyongyang to remind North Korea that the two countries' bond goes all the way back to the Korean War.
KELLY: Well, and I thank you for circling back to the nuclear issue 'cause that's where I want to land us. Anthony, it sounds as though we are now seeing two major world powers, China and Russia, accepting or seeming to accept North Korea's nuclear status. Does that open the door to the U.S. needing to do so down the line?
KUHN: Well, the official line out of Washington, Seoul and other foreign capitals is that the international consensus is still for denuclearization, and that's what they're going to stick to. But experts believe that as more governments see denuclearizing North Korea as increasingly unrealistic, pressure on Pyongyang to do so is easing up. Now, experts have argued for years that right now, the only option is for the U.S. to start not with denuclearization, but with arms control, to freeze Pyongyang's nuke production, then get them to reduce their arsenal in exchange for security guarantees and sanctions relief. But that would require actual diplomatic negotiations, which right now does not appear to be very high on either Washington or Pyongyang's agendas.
KELLY: That's reporting from NPR's Anthony Kuhn in Seoul and Jennifer Pak in Shanghai. Thanks, you two.
KUHN: You are welcome.
PAK: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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