WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 – South Korea, the United States and Japan hope that China will play a “constructive” role to help address concerns over a deepening military alignment between North Korea and Russia, a senior Seoul official said Friday, Yonhap news agency reported.
The official at Seoul’s presidential office made the remarks as South Korea’s National Security Adviser Shin Won-sik and his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Jake Sullivan and Takeo Akiba, respectively, held a trilateral meeting in Washington, D.C., on Friday to discuss the North’s recent troop deployment to Russia and other issues.
“We can assume that China might feel uneasy about (the North’s) deployment, which is the most serious level of (military) cooperation (between Pyongyang and Moscow),” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
“South Korea, the U.S. and Japan hope that China will play a constructive role regarding such illegal acts by North Korea and Russia,” he added.
Seoul’s top intelligence agency has said that North Korea is expected to send around 10,000 troops to Russia by the end of this year, including some 3,000 troops already dispatched earlier this month. Washington has also confirmed the North’s troop dispatch this month.
Observers said that with China under growing pressure to serve as a “responsible” stakeholder in global issues, the Asian superpower might not feel comfortable about the North’s deployment that could further escalate the armed conflict in Ukraine with security implications for the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.
