North Korea lacks rich relation in
Russia By Andrei Lankov
When people discuss the international
dimension of the North Korean issue, Russia is
always bound to feature prominently. Indeed,
Russia is a great power, a member of the Group of
Eight, and a neighbor of North Korea. It is
usually assumed as well that Russia has numerous
strategic interests in the area going back
decades, even centuries.
Indeed, history
itself seems to confirm that Russia has a somewhat
special relationship with North Korea. First of
all, Russia is the founder of the present North
Korean state.
The creation of North Korea
began in 1945 under the auspices of
Soviet generals, driven
by a mixture of ideological zeal and geopolitical
considerations. For the first 10 or so years of
North Korean history, the country remained under
the indirect but tight control of the Soviet
Union. Even when Kim Il-sung managed to outsmart
his Soviet masters and liberate himself from their
control, Soviet aid remained vital for the
survival of the North Korean economy and state.
On paper at least, relations between the
two countries appear to be not so bad. The late
North Korean strongman Kim Jong-il visited Russia
three times over the last 10 years; his last visit
took place in August 201, just a few months before
his sudden death. The North Korean media
frequently writes about Russia, and in most cases
the country is indeed presented in a very positive
light.
The Russian media is remarkably
less positive about North Korea, whose Stalinist
pageantry is often seen as an object of ridicule.
It is nonetheless clear that over the past 10-15
years, this country has enjoyed a measure of
sympathy (largely because of its seemingly
unwavering anti-Americanism). To many Russians,
North Korea appears to be a heroic David standing
firm against the marauding American Goliath. Such
a perception is bound to bring North Korea some
support in Russia where anti-American feeling is
quite common nowadays.
But a brief look at
trade statistics makes one suspicious about claims
in regard to Russia's prominence in North Korean
issues. It is not widely understood that summits
and official rhetoric notwithstanding, actual
trade between North Korea and Russia is miniscule,
even by the meager standards of North Korea.
In 2011, trade volume between the two
countries was merely US$0.12 billion. As
inter-state trade goes, this practically means
that Russia and North Korea have close to no
trade. In the same year, Sino-Korean trade hit the
$5.6 billion mark. If you compare this with other
East Asian countries this is still peanuts, but it
is nonetheless almost fifty times the level of
Russo-North Korean trade.
One also might
notice that the improvement in political relations
between Russia and North Korea had absolutely no
impact on Russo-North Korean bilateral trade
volumes. If anything, the trade declined when the
politicians were smiling and exchanging niceties.
Over the past 15 years, Russo-North Korean
trade on an annual basis has fluctuated around the
$100-$250 million mark (in a clear downward
trend). Throughout the same period, Sino-North
Korean trade has increased almost 10-fold.
It is strange that these obvious facts do
not attract enough attention among those who like
to talk about Russia's supposed leverage in
Pyongyang. These figures are easily obtainable and
yet almost entirely overlooked. This seems to be
because the figures do not easily fit into
preconceived notions about Russo-North Korean
relations; the inconvenient truth is that the
political rhetoric shared between the two
countries is often very shallow and lacking in an
economic basis.
To be blunt, Russian
businesses have no interest in North Korea.
North Korea is a very poor place that has
few comparative advantages in the world market.
Nonetheless such advantages do exist. First, North
Korea has some mineral resources (iron ore,coal,
copper, lead and so forth) which are largely to be
found in the northern most part of the country.
Second, it has a rather skilled and unbelievably
cheap workforce. North Korean workers consider
themselves lucky if they are paid $25 a month. But
none of these two advantages are of any
significance to corporate Russia.
Russian
mining companies have all of Siberia at their
disposal, and North Korea's mineral deposits do
not look all that impressive by comparison. Things
are made even worse by the constant threat of
political instability and the gross
underdevelopment of transportation and
infrastructure in general. Therefore, no major
Russian mining firm is willing to invest in North
Korea (some have been courted by Pyongyang, have
always responded in the negative).
The
pull of cheap labor is also not all that
attractive to Russian companies. The Russian
developmental model does not involve heavy
reliance on light industry in general, nor in
particular the manufacture of T-shirts and running
shoes. There is a moderate need for cheap North
Korean labor in Russia itself, and so for many
decades North Korean workers have been employed in
Russia. But the scale of these operations is quite
limited, and likely to remain so (10-20,000
workers at most).
One can of course point
at two much discussed projects of economic
cooperation between Russia and North Korea - the
proposed trans-Korean railway and proposed natural
gas pipeline. The pipeline project was discussed
during Kim Jong-il's last trip to Russia in 2011,
and as a result still attracts much attention.
However, we should remember that the very similar
trans-Korean railway was first officially approved
in the late 1990s, but still remains on the
drawing board and as elusive as ever. There is
good reason to believe that a similar fate awaits
the pipeline project: for years there will be
talks, enthusiastic newspaper articles, even
official visits, but not much in terms of actual
construction.
Both railway and pipeline
projects share one common feature: North Korea is
treated as a space to traverse. Had this area been
covered with tropical rainforest, or desert, it
would have little impact on either of these
projects, whose main task is to facilitate
interactions between Russia and South Korea.
From a purely commercial view, a short-cut
through North Korea makes perfect sense, but there
are many political problems which ensure that we
will have to wait for many years before any of
these projects will begin in earnest.
The
major problem is recurrent and perhaps incurable
instability which blights the Korean peninsula.
Once Russian companies start real construction,
they will become hostages of the complex and often
unpredictable clashes of power interests in and
around the Korean peninsula.
Worse still,
Russian companies will have all but no control
over these developments, which will be decided in
Pyongyang, Seoul, Washington and Beijing.
Both projects are moreover quite expensive
- we are talking a few billion dollars at least.
So what if another crisis strikes the Korean
peninsula after construction has begun? What if
Pyongyang decides to torpedo a South Korean cargo
ship? And what if hardliners in Washington decide
to introduce really tough sanctions against
Pyongyang and those companies who cooperate with
the "godless" North Koreans? And what about
hardliners in Seoul?
Such a crisis could
indeed halt a project suddenly, and Russian
companies would struggle to recover their
investments, which are likely to be quite
significant.
Maybe in the good old days,
the Soviet government would take the risk, seeing
as the projects themselves are good for Moscow's
influence on the Korean peninsula. However, the
present-day Russian Federation is not the Soviet
Union. Its foreign policy is far more pragmatic
and it is not going to waste money on such
nebulous matters as prestige and political
influence outside the former Soviet Union itself.
Also, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is a
country with a market economy, so companies that
make the investment and take the risk are not part
of the government. These companies understandably
do not want to sacrifice their capital for the
sake of some grand geopolitical scheme. And the
Russian government is unlikely to provide private
entrepreneurs with the necessary monetary
guarantees.
What does this all mean for
relations between North Korea and Russia? It seems
that over the past two decades, these relations
have become largely symbolic, and this is likely
to remain the case in the near future. There might
be more visits and more talks, but in economic
terms, the two states have drifted far apart and
this situation is unlikely to change any time
soon.
Dr Andrei Lankov is a
lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies, China
and Korea Center, Australian National University.
He graduated from Leningrad State University with
a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with
emphasis on Korea, and his thesis focused on
factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has published
books and articles on Korea and North Asia. He is
currently on leave, teaching at Kookmin
University, Seoul.
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