October 18, 2023: South Korea has canceled a 2018 agreement with North Korea reducing the surveillance and spying they carry out against each other. South Korea feared that North Korea might be tempted to emulate Hamas or, worse, use its nuclear weapons. This is a dangerous form of diplomacy, and it is unclear if North Korea was contemplating such a thing. Now North Korea is prospering by selling weapons and munitions to Russia in return for cash and much-needed food. This is good news for the North Korean government, which until last year was facing more popular unrest due to poor economic conditions and not enough food. Last year Russia sought to buy weapons and munitions from North Korea to supply their troops in Ukraine. More orders followed and soon this was visible on satellite photos of increased activity on the Trans-Siberian railroad.

It is unclear if North Korea was planning to risk its newly acquired prosperity with an attack on South Korea. Yet this is what South Korea feared and that’s why they canceled the 2018 treaty and resumed surveillance of North Korean military activities. All they could see was increased activity in weapons and munitions factories with most of that production being shipped to Russia. Since 2019, South Korea has not been able to get the North to negotiate about anything.

Not all the new weapons production is sent to Russia. North Korea is keeping the ballistic missile production going and “testing” more of them with launches into the waters between Korea and Japan. This frightens the Japanese, who note that most of these missiles seem to work and are not fired at their maximum ranges. While North Korea is pleased with this, Japan is also acquiring more BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense) systems. Japan has also increased its defense spending 26 percent this year compared to last year. That comes to $52 billion, which is about 1.4 percent of GDP and the largest Japanese defense budget ever. It is also the sixth year that Japan increased defense spending and the goal is to eventually reach two percent of GDP. Japan and South Korea are now spending about the same amount on defense and are both in the top ten defense spenders in the world. The others are the United States, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany and France. South Korea is number nine spending a little more than Japan at number ten.

While the United States accounts for about 40 percent of worldwide defense spending, China and Russia together only account for about 17 percent. The rest of the top ten are either allies of the Americans or friendly. Ukraine is, in terms of total defense spending that includes donations from NATO countries, figuratively in the top five when it comes to defense acquisitions. This is a dubious distinction for Ukraine, which is using it all to repel a Russian invasion. South Korea has profited from this because NATO nations bordering Ukraine or Russia have increased defense spending and purchased nearly $15 billion worth of South Korea weapons and munitions. South Korea produces a lot more military gear than the north and this is top grade stuff. One side effect is that once Poland receives all the South Korean tanks, mobile artillery and rocket (guided and unguided) launchers from South Korea, they will have the most powerful army in NATO Europe. This is to discourage any Russian attacks on Poland or any other NATO nation in the area.

NATO was created as a mutual defense organization to deal with any Russian attack. That never came during the Cold War, but Russia returned to its aggressive ways in 2022 when it invaded Ukraine. NATO is a major support of Ukraine and has agreed to admit Ukraine as a member once the Russian invaders have been dealt with. One reason Russia invaded Ukraine was to prevent them from joining NATO and the EU (European Union). The EU is mainly an economic alliance and Ukraine wants to join it and NATO rather than remaining neutral and threatened again with Russian aggression.

Iran tried to make up for its dismal economic situation by being the major military threat in the region. It’s the best they can do because the religious dictatorship that has misruled Iran since the 1980s does not seem capable of much else. The religious leaders that rule Iran complain about their dire economic situation without admitting they are the problem. Russia has a similar attitude, which is one reason Russia and Iran are allies. North Korea is also part of this triumvirate of tribulations and shares many bad habits with Russia and Iran.