[NGW Magazine] The Korean gas line riddle
The unprecedented meeting between the premiers of the US and North Korea was the subject of a Trumpian tweet as he flew to meet Vladimir Putin in Helsinki – also a surprising development. Russia too has interests in a united Korea.
The notion of an unquestionably loyal ally in national terms is becoming increasingly anachronistic. This observation has been borne out not just in the US capital and the way in which the president, Donald Trump, deals with his Nato partners; but also on the Korean peninsula, where many powers are engaged in convoluted ploys with each other, and where the notion of foe and friend has become increasingly blurred. The gas line project that would run down the length of the peninsula has also become a part of this geopolitical game.
The North Korean leader’s meeting with Trump was on the front page of the world’s press but other developments, less discussed at the time, also bear some scrutiny.
One of the most important was the re-evaluation of the notion of friend/foe. This was the case with both Koreas. North Korea’s relationship with China could be a good example. China is regarded as North Korea’s major ally, and the North Korean leader has visited China several times, supposedly reaffirming the close ties between the two countries. But the North Korean leader has not forgotten that China was among those states that imposed sanctions on North Korea. There was also a rumour that China and the US had discussed the possible joint occupation of North Korea.
Logically, Kim Jong Un understood that China’s attachment to North Korea was conditional, and North Korea had to think about a counterbalance, or at least an alternative, to Beijing. The same feeling emerged in the South.
Washington’s projected image is that the US is South Korea’s faithful ally. But the leaders of South Korea can hardly forget Trump’s desire to engage in “preventive” war, possibly even nuclear, with little concern for what would happen to South Korea. South Korea has taken this into consideration and so can hardly regard the US as an ally on which it may always rely.
Consequently, both North and South Koreas have begun to co-operate, or at least plan to co-operate – both of them discussed ways to modernize their railways and to look for geopolitical and economic alternatives.
These might well include gas lines that could traverse North Korea before reaching South Korea. The search does not imply that they are planning to “divorce” their major geopolitical and economic patrons. The new partners are not planned as alternatives, but just “supplements,” or counterbalances, to the old alliances. And Russia has emerged here as a good “supplement,” or at least as a provider of cheap gas, albeit Pyongyang also does not trust Moscow completely, and remembers well that, when throwing its weight behind sanctions on North Korea, Moscow deported North Korean guest workers.
Russia and North Korea’s flirtation
On one hand, Moscow seems to have followed the international community in sanctioning North Korea. On the other hand, it continued to develop a relationship with Pyongyang and in December 2017, a Russian military delegation visited North Korea. In April 2018, Russia’s long-standing foreign minister Sergei Lavrov saw the North Korean foreign minister, and accepted an invitation to visit North Korea.
He did just that May 31, paying a visit to North Korea, where he saw the North Korean leader and invited him to visit Russia, implying that reliance on Russia is the only way that North Korea can avoid being absolutely dependent on China – its major supplier of oil and, possibly, gas. Some US observers also elaborated on this view. Lyle J Goldstein, Associate Professor at the China Maritime Institute at the US Naval War College, noted: “I have previously argued in this forum that Moscow’s role in the Korean Crisis is uniquely important, in part because Russia is not China. Indeed, Moscow and Beijing may have a similar approach more or less, but Russia is inherently less threatening to both Koreas, precisely because it does not have the demographic, economic, and cultural heft of the Chinese colossus next door.” (Goldstein: Moon shines in Moscow, The National Interest, July 4, 2018.)
Kim Jong Un seems to share the same thoughts, and he replied to Lavrov’s invitation that, while busy, he would still find time for the trip. Vladivostok is regarded as the place for the possible rendezvous by the two leaders.
Russia and South Korea
Moscow’s flirtation with Pyongyang followed a similar pattern of flirtation with Seoul, with gas lines possibly in mind. Putin’s goal was to take advantage of a peculiar detente on the peninsula and proposed a project which would bring both Koreas together, and benefit Russia’s economic and geopolitical interests.
In June 2018, soon after the Trump-Kim meeting, Putin met the South Korean leader and discussed a variety of subjects, including increasing economic co-operation between the two countries. One of them was building a railroad network which would connect Russia and broader Eurasia with South Korea.Naturally, the road would cross North Korea, with which Russia has a 17-km border, and a railroad bridge built in 1959. Putin also expressed Moscow’s interest in building a railroad in his discussion with the chairman of the China Media Corporation.
The two leaders also most likely discussed gas lines which could send Russian gas to South Korea as well as other projects. One could also note that Russia and South Korea’s gas co-operation has a broad context. South Korean companies have helped Russia to develop gas and oil fields in the Russian Arctic. South Korean companies are also building 15 LNG tankers for Russia.
They are designed to take gas from Yamal LNG and, therefore, could sail the Arctic. As in the case with the railroads, the gas lines would cross North Korea. One should also note here that leaders of both South and North Korea have discussed similar projects.
One should also remember that Russia also played the same game of “multi-vectorism” as both North and South Korea. While playing China against the West, mostly the US, in his dealings with South and North Korea, Putin played both of them against China. Putin treats China as Russia’s strategic ally and yet he looks at China as just an alternative to the West, with which Moscow has a tense relationship, with direct implications for Putin’s pet gas line projects.
The Nord Stream 2 gas line to Germany is still not a sure deal and the gas line to China, the ‘Power of Siberia,’ which emerged in 2014, is not so much an economic as a geopolitical project, or at least geopolitics plays here as much a role as economics. The project is not that profitable, and Moscow engaged in this type of enterprise only after 2014, when its relationship with the West deteriorated considerably with the events in Ukraine.
Consequently, Moscow’s approach to both Korean states is informed by Moscow’s relationship with Beijing. Moscow wants to demonstrate that China is not the only market for Russian gas, and that other options in Asia also exist. The Kremlin thought about the possibility of laying gas lines through North Korea several years ago, when North Korea was run by the father of the present-day leader, and most likely repeated the proposal to the South Korean leader. But only now does the project appear to be viable. One could question how the leaders of all these countries could collaborate. Their ideologies seem to be absolutely opposed to each other. For example, the Russian regime is strongly anti-Communist. As a matter of fact, the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution was almost ignored, and when the regime deals with these events, it presents it as the actions of criminals, or utopians.
But the anti-Communist view does not prevent Moscow from dealing with Pyongyang, and in the Kremlin’s view, the ideological and political differences between the two will not affect co-operation between Pyongyang and Seoul. The Kremlin’s views could be deduced from a comment in a Russian newspaper article. The author of the article noted that after Trump’s visit, North Korea could well forge a geopolitical alliance with the US, to juxtapose its present-day dependence on China.
One could pose the question, the author of the article stated, how it could be possible to forge an alliance between capitalist US and Stalinist North Korea. The author of the quoted article answered his own question. He stated that ideology plays no role in geopolitics, as demonstrated by the fact that arch-conservative Nixon’s US could strike an alliance with Maoist China.
Thus, it is possible for Stalinist North Korea to forge an alliance with Trump’s America. Still, the article was not about North Korea and the US, but actually about the possible interaction between Russia and North Korea on one hand, and North and South Korea on the other hand. It remains to be seen what would be the actual result of these arrangements. But Russia’s simultaneous arrangements with both North and South Koreas indicate the fluidity and unpredictability of global politics.
Dmitry Shlapentokh