Kremlin, N. Korea Rebuilding Ties
Russia and North Korea signed a friendship pact Wednesday aimed at healing bilateral ties that have been strained since Moscow established diplomatic relations with South Korea a decade ago.
Visiting Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, along with his counterpart Paek Nam Sun, signed a treaty that “indicates a start of a new stage in the development of mutual relations,” according to a joint statement carried by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency and monitored in Tokyo.
The friendship treaty, signed during the first top-level visit by a Moscow official to North Korea in a decade, replaces a Soviet-era mutual aid pact. Russia is in the process of reassessing its strategic interests in Asia.
But the new treaty omits provisions that made Moscow and Pyongyang political and military allies under the old pact.
In years past, Pyongyang was an important Soviet ally in Asia. But bilateral relations were badly strained when Moscow established diplomatic ties with South Korea in 1990. Seoul is now Russia’s major trading partner.
North and South Korea have remained technically at war since 1953, as no formal peace pact was signed to end the Korean War.
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