Putin must take Gorbachev’s path, not Stalin's

We hope Putin finds a bright future in the path Gorbachev took, not the one Stalin took.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday visited Pyongyang for a two-day, one-night trip. He visited North Korea two months after his inauguation as president in May 2000. His second trip to the North took place after 24 years. Putin’s visit sounds alarms over the security of South Korea, as he could incite North Korea after emerging as Russia’s czar in his fifth term.

Putin will have a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Wednesday. It is his third meeting with Kim following earlier ones in April 2019 and September 2023. After Russia rapidly got closer to North Korea after the Ukraine war to import conventional weapons from the North, the international community expressed deep concerns. This time, Russia will also strike a weapons deal with North Korea before or after the summit to get more missiles from the North. In return, North Korea wants to get recognition from Russia as a nuclear weapons state, seek its support to lift international sanctions and secure the sophisticated military technology needed to carry out Kim’s Five National Defense Missions.

The Yoon Suk Yeol administration plans to respond to the dangerous summit based on the results of it. If Russia crosses a red line by handing over its technologies for SLBMs’ atmospheric re-entry and nuclear-powered submarines, the government must sternly respond. North Korea and Russia made official their plan to reestablish the bilateral relations based on “new legal foundations.” What attracts our attention is whether they will raise the level of their relationship and whether they will revive the clause on “automatic intervention in times of crisis,” which was included in the USSR-DPRK Alliance Treaty in 1961.

This clause — which mandates an automatic military intervention if either side is invaded by outside forces — was repealed by the Russian government under Boris Yeltsin in 1996. When Putin visited Pyongyang in 2000 and signed a new treaty with North Korea, the two countries inserted a clause on “immediate contact when unavoidable” to fill the engagement vacuum. Security experts expect the two countries to elevate the level of their relations to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” from the current “friendly, amicable relations.” If the two countries revive the automatic intervention clause, the South Korea-Russia relations will face a crisis.

Historically, Russia had big impact on the peninsula. Joseph Stalin endorsed Kim Il Sung’s invasion of South Korea in 1950, and Mikhail Gorbachev opened a new era for reconciliation and cooperation through the establishment of diplomatic relations between South Korea and the Soviet Union in 1990. We hope Putin finds a bright future in the path Gorbachev took, not the one Stalin took.