I was recently on a mission from the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in South Korea and Japan, between March 30 and April 3, at a time when the Indo-Pacific is confirmed as one of the centers of gravity of international security. The objective of this mission was to deepen the European Union’s strategic cooperation with two fundamental partners in an international order that is increasingly pressured by Russia’s war against Ukraine, instability in the Middle East and the growing assertiveness of authoritarian regimes.
What I saw and heard on the ground reinforced a conviction: it is no longer possible to look at the Korean Peninsula as a distant topic, confined to Asian geography. What is happening there has direct consequences for international stability and the security of our democratic allies. And it also has, very clearly, consequences for Europe, for two central reasons: because North Korea has become a more aggressive and unpredictable military actor; and because its collaboration with Russia in the context of the war in Ukraine – began to directly link Euro-Atlantic security to Indo-Pacific security.
Meanwhile, Seoul is trying to rehearse a new approach to North Korea. This year, the South Korean government formalized a policy of “peaceful coexistence” based on three principles: respect for the North’s system, rejection of reunification by absorption and renunciation of hostile acts.
The intention is understandable. No serious democracy can give up on dialogue, especially when facing a nuclearized, opaque regime that is still technically at war with itself. But understandable does not mean risk-free.
Coexistence can be a legitimate goal; it cannot turn into a form of self-deception in the face of a regime that continues to define South Korea as its “most hostile enemy”. The facts, unfortunately, speak for themselves. At the exact moment that Seoul sought to defuse the tension and interpret some signals coming from Pyongyang as a possible opening to detente, North Korea responded with new ballistic missile launches.
There is, however, a second reason to look at this issue with the utmost attention: the war in Ukraine. North Korea is not just a factor in regional instability. It also became a direct facilitator of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, continues to supply Russia with weapons and reinforces its human presence in the conflict. This has two very serious consequences. The first is European: every ammunition, every system and every soldier supplied by Pyongyang helps Moscow prolong the war against Ukraine.
The second is Asian: this support may be being compensated with Russian technical assistance for North Korean strategic programs, particularly in terms of satellites and missile guidance. In other words, the war in Ukraine may be making North Korea more militarily capable, more sophisticated, and more dangerous to Seoul, Tokyo, and regional stability.
Russian aggression against Ukraine, North Korean support for that aggression, and growing tension on the Korean Peninsula are not separate crises. They are different expressions of the same problem: the convergence between revisionist regimes that simultaneously test the determination of democracies. For Seoul, it is not just the warmongering rhetoric of the North that is at stake, it is the possibility of this regime returning from the war in Ukraine more trained, more equipped and more dangerous. For Japan, the same reasoning applies. For the European Union, the lesson is equally clear: there are no watertight compartments between European security and Indo-Pacific security.
Write according to the old Spelling Agreement
Leave a Reply