Blinken arrives in Seoul for talks on North Korea and its military ties with Russia

SEOUL, South Korea — The United States and South Korea closed ranks behind common approaches to North Korea, Russia and China on Thursday, vowing to continue to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and boosting humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza caught in Israel’s war against Hamas.

In talks with South Korea’s leadership, including President Yoon Suk Yeol , U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the growing threat posed by North Korea and its alleged provision of military equipment and munitions to Russia to help it wage war on Ukraine, the State Department said. They also spoke of the importance of U.S.-South Korea cooperation on global challenges, including China’s assertiveness and the instability in the Middle East.

“They shared concerns about the DPRK’s provocations in the region and strongly condemned the provision of military equipment and munitions by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the Russian Federation for use in its war against Ukraine,” the State Department said of Blinken’s meeting with Yoon that also covered improving relations between South Korea and Japan as well as the importance of three-way cooperation between Washington, Tokyo and Seoul.

At a news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, Blinken said they discussed unspecified further actions the countries could take to intensify pressure on Moscow not to transfer military technology to North Korea in violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.

North Korea has been supplying artillery shells and other munitions to Russia in recent months to fuel its war efforts in Ukraine, U.S. and South Korean officials have said, and they suspect that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un could be seeking Russian technologies and other assistance in return to upgrade his own military.

““We’re seeing a two-way street. We’re seeing the DPRK provide military equipment to Russia for its brutal aggression against Ukraine but we’re also seeing Russia provide technological support to the DPRK for its own military programs and that’s a real concern for the security of Korea,” Blinken said.

Park called China to take a greater role to pull North Korea back from destabilizing behavior, saying that the arms alignment between Moscow and Pyongyang would go against Beijing’s interests.

“If there are going to be arms deals, that would contribute toward tensions in this part of the world and China would not like to see that,” Park said.

Tensions between the Koreas are at their highest point in years as the pace of both Pyongyang’s weapons tests and South Korea’s combined military exercises with the United States have intensified in a tit-for-tat cycle. Before Blinken’s arrival, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency condemned the visit as well as one by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who travels to Seoul next week, describing them as “warmongers” bringing a “new war cloud” to Asia.

Blinken arrived in Seoul following a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Japan that previewed much of what he was to discuss.

“We reiterate our call for the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and demand that North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons, existing nuclear programs, and any other WMD and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner in accordance with all relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” the G7 ministers said.

Both Pyongyang and Moscow have denied the accusations that North Korea has been providing Russia with munitions.

On China, the G7 adopted a very similar line to that held by the U.S. — that members are willing to work productively with Beijing as long as it respects international rules and regulations.

“We underscore that China has a responsibility to uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter in their entirety,” the ministers said. “We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the East and South China Seas, strongly opposing any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force or coercion,” the G7 said.

U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping next week on the sideline of the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum summit in San Francisco.