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Russian-Korean Relationships

created Sep 9th 2020, 07:53 by yashwanth gowda


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    Even more confusing was Russia’s record in the post-Soviet period on the Korean Peninsula, where the Soviet Union and Russia had had serious national security interests since the end of World War II. Until the later 1980s promotion of these interests was associated in Moscow basically with maintaining alliance relations with North Korea. In the years that followed Russia first moved to a more balanced relationship with both North and South Korea, and in the first half of the 1990s tilted towards South Korea, and in the first half of the 1990s tilted towards South Korea, downgrading its relations with Pyongyang to the minimum. These policy changes culminated in 1995 when Moscow notified Pyongyang of its intention to replace the 1961 Soviet-North Korean Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance and proposed to exclude from a new treaty any obligations to provide military support to its former ally. At the same time it tried to expand its relationship with Seoul by signing an agreement on massive arms exports to South Korea.  
 
     The abandonment of a balanced approach backfired. It resulted in a predictable loss of influence not only in Pyongyang but also in Seoul. The negative consequences were first felt when Russia was not invited to take part in the implementation of the 1994 US-North Korean Framework Agreement, which envisaged among other things assistance to North Korea by supplying it with light-water nuclear power reactors, although Russia had the necessary experience and technologies in this field. These consequences became absolutely clear when South Korea did not support Russia's inclusion in the proposed four-party talks between the two Koreas, China and the USA on the final settlement of the Korean problem.  
 
     Although under the new policy guidelines Russia tried to regain its position on the Korean peninsula, it was not until the new government of President Kim Dae Jung was established in Seoul and launched its ‘sunshine policy’ that the Russian-South Korean political dialogue started to improve. South Korea’s positive change in attitude towards the role of Russia in preserving peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in North-East Asia in general was reflected in Kim’s proposal for the participation of Russia along with China, Japan, North and South Korea, Mongolia and the USA in multilateral negotiations on North-East Asian security. As another indication of improving relations, ties in the security field were revived when in October 1998 a South Korean naval squadron visited Vladivostok and held joint exercises there with the Russian Pacific Fleet. Russia and South Korea also intensified their high-level political contacts when in January 1999 the South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade visited Moscow, while the Russian State Duma

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