West on high alert as Kim woos Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s scheduled sojourn to North Korea this week has raised alarm successful Seoul, which has accused Pyongyang of supplying arms to Moscow for usage successful Ukraine.

Images posted to Telegram uncover Pyongyang has gone all-out to hole for Putin’s arrival, which is expected connected Tuesday. The city’s streets person been lined with Russian flags and portraits of the Russian leader, with a banner welcoming Putin placed on a freeway featuring galore North Korean propaganda posters.

“The relationship betwixt North Korea and Russia is eternal,” work 1 banner extracurricular the city’s Sunan International Airport.

“We warmly invited comrade Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,” different said.

North Korean authorities had reportedly cleared retired the runways extracurricular the Pyongyang airdrome a week agone successful mentation for the visit.

Putin volition beryllium greeted by an authoritative invited ceremonial and a defender of honour earlier commencing talks with North Korean person Kim Jong-un.

In a missive published successful the latest variation of the Rodong Sinmun, the paper of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, the Russian person said the 2 nations had built a beardown concern implicit the past 7 decades. Putin took liberty successful criticising the West successful the missive arsenic helium pledged to physique “indivisible information successful Eurasia”.

“We volition make alternate mechanisms of commercialized and communal settlements that are not controlled by the West, and jointly defy illegitimate unilateral restrictions,” Putin wrote.

“And astatine the aforesaid clip – we volition physique an architecture of adjacent and indivisible information successful Eurasia.”

He besides thanked the federation for its ongoing enactment for Russia’s warfare successful Ukraine and promised to enactment Pyongyang to support its interests, which helium suggested were nether unit from “US pressure, blackmail and subject threats”.

Analysts accidental determination are a fig of imaginable reasons down Russia strengthening ties with the hermit kingdom arsenic it continues to wage warfare successful Ukraine, earning wide condemnation from Western powers.

“Strengthening ties with its aged Cold War spouse allows Russia to undermine the planetary sanctions regime, antagonistic immoderate proposition that the US and its allies person been capable to isolate Moscow, and besides adhd to concerns successful Washington that it whitethorn person to woody with a materially strengthened North Korea,” John Nilsson-Wright, caput of the Japan and Koreas Programme astatine Cambridge University said via the BBC.

The diplomatic sojourn from 1 of the world’s astir salient superpowers is besides a large triumph for the legitimacy of North Korea arsenic a large subordinate connected the planetary stage. As a federation unopen disconnected from overmuch of the satellite for the bulk of its existence, North Korea continues to look scrutiny from the antiauthoritarian West for its reported civilian rights breaches and ongoing displays of subject might, peculiarly successful the signifier of rocket launches.

US nationalist information spokesperson John Kirby said the Biden medication was wary of the strengthening ties betwixt the 2 subject powers, who are some openly anti-West.

“What we are acrophobic astir is the deepening narration betwixt these 2 countries,” helium said.

Tensions boil arsenic shots fired crossed border

In a startling breach of the heavy fortified border, dozens of North Korean soldiers concisely crossed into South Korean territory connected Tuesday, lone to retreat aft informing shots were fired.

This marks the 2nd incidental betwixt the 2 nations successful arsenic galore weeks, arsenic Pyongyang escalates its borderline fortifications amid plummeting inter-Korean relations.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) revealed that respective North Korean soldiers were injured by landmine explosions adjacent the border.

Pyongyang has precocious stationed troops successful the country to wide scrub and laic further mines, amplifying tensions betwixt the 2 Koreas. Despite the 1950-1953 Korean War concluding with an armistice, the 2 nations stay technically astatine war, and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating them is already 1 of the astir heavy mined regions globally.

North Korea’s caller actions see laying much landmines, reinforcing tactical roads, and installing what look to beryllium antitank barriers, according to Seoul’s military.

But the JCS believes Tuesday’s incursion, akin to an incidental connected June 9, was accidental.

“Dozens of North Korean troops crossed the Military Demarcation Line contiguous … (and) retreated northwards aft informing shots were fired,” a JCS authoritative stated.

The JCS further reported that North Korean soldiers engaged successful reinforcing the borderline person suffered “multiple casualties from repeated landmine detonation incidents” but look undeterred, continuing their operations recklessly.

“North Korea’s activities look to beryllium a measurement to fortify interior control, specified arsenic blocking North Korean troops and North Koreans from defecting to the South,” the JCS authoritative noted.

‘No reconciliation’

“This has alternatively symbolic significance,” Koh Yu-hwan, North Korean studies emeritus prof astatine Dongguk University told AFP, saying adding caller mines were making it wide Pyongyang did not privation dialog with the South.

“By laying mines, North Korea is demonstrating erstwhile again that, arsenic per the instructions of the ultimate person (Kim Jong-un), determination volition beryllium nary reconciliation with the South,” helium added.

“North Korea is not laying mines crossed the full frontline, but alternatively successful areas that are easy observable by the South. They are besides blocking roads and railways that were antecedently areas of inter-Korean cooperation.” During a play of warmer ties successful 2018, the 2 Koreas removed landmines on a conception of the heavy fortified borderline successful a bid to easiness subject tensions.

Earlier this month, astir 20 North Korean soldiers crossed the subject demarcation enactment betwixt the 2 countries successful a conception of the borderline “overgrown with trees”, according to Seoul’s military, which assessed the incursion to beryllium accidental.

That crossing came arsenic North Korea was sending much than a 1000 balloons laden with trash southward — a response, it said, to balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang propaganda sent northbound by activists.

The South Korean authorities successful crook suspended a 2018 tension-reducing subject woody and restarted loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts on the border, infuriating the North, which warned Seoul was creating “a caller crisis”.

Ahn Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher who runs the World Institute for North Korea Studies, told AFP that the North Korean subject was trying to survey the borderline country to instal much barriers.

“Engineering and reflection units person accrued their beingness successful the area. It is believed that the disorderly actions of those who are unfamiliar with the minefields person led to these mine-related accidents.”