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I. Background: The emergence of "abnormal North Korea-China relations"?

In July 2023, during North Korea's Victory Day celebrations, Chairman Kim Jong Un publicly received a personal letter from Chinese President Xi Jinping, which was subsequently witnessed by multiple foreign dignitaries including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. That September, Kim remarked that "our country's top priority lies in relations with Russia," a statement that appeared to signal a shift in Pyongyang's diplomatic center of gravity. In June 2024, the putative "North Korea-Russia Treaty" was signed, to which China responded with a somewhat formulaic statement. In January of this year, North Korea's Rodong Sinmun featured Russian President Vladimir Putin's New Year's message prominently on its front and second pages, while Xi's message was relegated to the third page.

In early 2024, China also began to show signs of a symbolic recalibration in its diplomatic posture. A commemorative plaque marking the 2018 "Kim-Xi Stroll" was removed, and a nearby exhibition space honoring the visits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il to China was dismantled. In May of the same year, China agreed to include the phrase "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" in the joint statement from the ROK-China-Japan trilateral summit, prompting a vehement backlash from Pyongyang, which decried the move as interference in its internal affairs. Following the signing of the North Korea-Russia treaty in July, Chinese Ambassador to North Korea Wang Yajun was conspicuously absent from the Victory Day festivities, a diplomatic signal of growing distance between Beijing and Pyongyang.

In this sequence of developments, speculation over "abnormal North Korea-China relations" began to emerge. Some analysts interpreted North Korea's perceived displeasure as a reaction to China's pursuit of stabilizing relations with the United States. They pointed to the so-called "China's role hypothesis," the efforts at conflict management between Washington and Beijing during the November 2023 APEC Summit, and the partial restoration of military channels between the two nations from April to May 2024 as supporting evidence. Others posited that the North Korea-Russia treaty itself had triggered the deterioration of North Korea-China ties, arguing that it amplified Moscow's influence on the Korean Peninsula, diluted Beijing's leverage over Pyongyang, and clashed with China's strategic interests—thus acting as a new source of bilateral tension.

However, such interpretations suffer from limited explanatory reach and tend to conflate episodic and structural levels of analysis, thereby undermining logical coherence in causal reasoning. For example, signs of strain in North Korea-China relations began to surface at least a year prior to the conclusion of the North Korea-Russia treaty, casting doubt on the notion that the treaty was a decisive catalyst for conflict. Moreover, Beijing's longstanding prioritization of relations with Washington over Pyongyang is a persistent trend that cannot fully account for recent developments.

As overlapping projections swirl around issues such as exit strategy for the Russia-Ukraine war and the potential resumption of North Korea-U.S. dialogue, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish "signals" from "noise." It is precisely during such periods of uncertainty that analysts must establish clear hierarchies among variables. Put differently, approaches that draw sweeping conclusions from isolated incidents, or ones that treat structural factors and short-term events on equal footing, risk diminishing analytical validity. This commentary thus seeks to redress the shortcomings of existing interpretations by offering a diachronic analysis of North Korea-China-Russia relations grounded in the structural dynamics of great power geopolitics. In doing so, it aims to construct a more coherent explanatory framework for understanding the contours of North Korea-China relations.

II. A Historical Review of DPRK–China–Russia Relations During the Cold War

In the decade following 1945, the Soviet Union served as the principal provider of military and economic support to North Korea. This was driven by Moscow's perception of the Korean Peninsula's northeastern region as a potential strategic foothold for expansion. China, for its part, also recognized the strategic importance of North Korea as a buffer against foreign incursions but lacked the material capacity at the time to provide substantial aid. These contrasting geostrategic appraisals between the Soviet Union and China became pronounced during the Korean War.

In early October 1950, Stalin urged Mao Zedong to dispatch Chinese troops to the Korean Peninsula. Mao agreed conditionally, demanding Soviet air support. However, Stalin, wary of direct confrontation with the United States and the risk of escalation into nuclear war, proposed that North Korean forces retreat to Manchuria (Shen, 2020). This suggestion reflected a strategic calculation that, in the worst-case scenario, the entirety of Korea could fall under UN control. Despite the uncertain promise of Soviet air cover, Mao ultimately decided to intervene with Chinese ground forces. This episode clearly illustrated the divergence in geostrategic priorities between Moscow and Beijing regarding the Korean Peninsula.

From Stalin's perspective, Korea was a useful strategic outpost, but not one worth defending at the cost of a nuclear war. Even if the UN were to overrun North Korea, the Soviet's strategic core lay in Europe, and the sparsely populated Far East was of marginal importance. In contrast, North Korea represented a vital buffer zone for China. After the war, China continued to provide all-encompassing assistance to North Korea. During the reconstruction period, Chinese forces played a major role in rebuilding infrastructure (Shen and Xia, 2012). From 1954 to 1956, Beijing delivered $320 million in aid—surpassing even Soviet contributions (CIA, 1956).

In 1956, Khrushchev launched a campaign for collective leadership and peaceful coexistence, a direction unacceptable to both Kim Il Sung and Mao. Consequently, by the mid-1960s, both Sino-Soviet and North Korea–Soviet relations had deteriorated to the point of mutual denunciation. In response to Moscow's ideological shift, Kim purged pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet factions from the North Korean leadership in August 1956 and reasserted a doctrine of self-reliance. This move also underscored North Korea's refusal to allow foreign military presence on its soil, nullifying Soviet ambitions of projecting influence through territorial control. The USSR responded by significantly scaling back its aid.

In stark contrast, China expanded support for Pyongyang despite its own domestic crisis, which was concurrently marked by famine and failure of the Great Leap Forward. Between 1958 and 1964, China provided around 460 aircraft to North Korea, underscoring how crucial Pyongyang remained as a strategic buffer in Beijing's eyes.

From 1965 to 1968, North Korea-China relations declined while North Korea-Soviet ties gradually improved. North Korea openly criticized Mao and the Cultural Revolution, drawing fierce rebukes from Beijing. These mutual denigrations  exacerbated ideological tensions. Yet, the primary catalyst for the deterioration was China's ambivalence regarding support for Vietnam during the war. At the time, the Soviets funneled military aid to North Vietnam through routes passing via Vladivostok, the Black Sea, and China. Within Beijing, a rift emerged over whether to permit Soviet munitions to transit Chinese territory. Mao's faction opposed this, while Deng Xiaoping's camp was more amenable. This internal split partially contributed to the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution (Radchenko, 2024).

Mao's underlying fear was not only the sensitivity of allowing Soviet military shipments through China, but also the broader concern over a strong, unified Vietnam emerging just south of China. For Kim Il Sung, Beijing's posture suggested that China might one day obstruct Korean reunification under Pyongyang's terms, deepening his distrust of the Chinese leadership. It was in this climate that North Korea-Soviet ties began to rebound. Recognizing North Korea's geographic proximity to Beijing, the Soviets resumed military assistance, including the delivery of  100 MiG-21 fighter jets.

In 1969, as Sino-Soviet tensions escalated, President Nixon began exploring rapprochement with China as part of a broader strategy to end the Vietnam War and counterbalance Moscow. This led the Soviets to seek détente with the U.S., proposing strategic arms reductions and easing of hostilities. With both Beijing and Moscow working to stabilize relations with Washington, the strategic value of North Korea as a buffer zone declined, resulting in substantial reductions in aid from both powers through the late 1970s.

After the Vietnam War ended in the mid-1970s, China's relationship with Vietnam rapidly soured due to intensifying competition with the Soviet Union for ideological leadership in the developing world. The 1978 Vietnam-Soviet economic and military accords alarmed Beijing, which saw them as tantamount to a formal alliance. Fearing strategic encirclement, China decided to launch a military response to reassert its regional standing and 'recalibrate' Hanoi's foreign policy trajectory.

China justified its 1979 war against Vietnam on three grounds: discriminatory policies against ethnic Chinese and minorities within Vietnam; Hanoi's 1978 invasion of Cambodia and the ousting of the Khmer Rouge regime (a Chinese ally); and Vietnam's occupation of parts of the Spratly Islands claimed by China. While all were plausible motivations, the paramount driver was China's fear of strategic encirclement. Domestically, Beijing cast the war as a "defensive counterstrike" against a Soviet proxy (Zhang, 2015).

The Sino-Vietnamese War impressed upon North Korea the unsettling possibility that China was willing to use force, even against longtime allies, if its strategic interests were threatened. When Deng Xiaoping communicated China's intent to invade Vietnam directly to Kim Il Sung, the North Korean leadership was reportedly stunned and betrayed. The episode reinforced Pyongyang's belief that even reunification would not safeguard North Korea from being sacrificed should Beijing find it expedient. This episode deeply entrenched North Korea's structural mistrust of China (Shin et al., 2020).

Indeed, in 1975, yet buoyed by North Vietnam's victory, Pyongyang had supported Hanoi materially and militarily during the war, dispatching at least one fighter battalion and two anti-aircraft artillery regiments (RFA 2024). During a 1975 meeting with Mao, Kim Il Sung broached his vision for Korean reunification, to which Mao responded unfavorably (Wilson Center, 1975).

The U.S.-Soviet détente of the 1970s came to an end following key developments such as the Soviet Union’s precision missile testing and advancements in multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) technology in 1977, as well as the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Beginning with the Reagan administration, the United States adopted a strategy aimed at overwhelming and ultimately collapsing the Soviet Union. In this context, North Korea’s geopolitical value to the USSR was once again elevated; the Soviets resumed military assistance to the North from 1984 to 1986 with deliveries of over 100 aircraft, including MiG-29s, MiG-23s, and Su-25s (CIA, 1985). 

Meanwhile, Sino-American relations remained relatively stable, leading Beijing to reduce its support for North Korea. Following renewed U.S.-Soviet détente talks in Geneva in 1987, the USSR once again downgraded North Korea’s strategic value. The Soviet Union soon dissolved in December 1991. Hence, from the late 1980s onward, both China and the Soviet Union largely suspended any meaningful aid to Pyongyang. 

Changes in the dynamics among Cold War-era major powers repeatedly reshaped North Korea’s geopolitical significance, which in turn played a critical role in determining the nature and extent of support offered by the Soviet Union. Even during periods of active assistance, Pyongyang secured advanced military technologies (e.g., aircraft) only when Beijing or Moscow perceived acute security threats. The 1979 Chinese invasion of Vietnam in particular left a lasting scar, convincing Pyongyang of China’s unreliability as a security partner. (Some interpretations even suggest that the Soviet Union manipulated Hanoi into provoking Beijing to exhaust Chinese capabilities.)

North Korea aligned with neither. Instead of bandwagoning with a unilateral power, Pyongyang chose to meticulously observe shifts in the strategic landscape of global politics, leveraging its intermediary position to maximize autonomy and regime survival amidst great power rivalry.

III. Post-Cold War Structural Stability & Constraints in North Korea-China-Russia Relations

The most salient shift between the Cold War era and contemporary great-power politics is that the United States' primary strategic competitor has transitioned from the Soviet Union to China. The steady progression of U.S.-China relations since the late 1960s gradually eroded North Korea's strategic value to Beijing. However, with China now firmly established as Washington's principal rival, the United States has adopted a persistent strategy of containing Beijing' consequently, North Korea has regained strategic utility as a 'buffer zone' in China's calculus.

Importantly, North Korea's nuclear armament was pursued not in deference to Chinese or Russian expectations but in accordance with its own strategic judgment. Ironically, this move has further solidified its function as a buffer state. On the other hand, Russia, lacking either the ambition or capacity to engage in strategic expansion in Northeast Asia or to provoke full-scale conflict with the U.S., remains a secondary actor in the regional order. As such, the support provided by both China and Russia to North Korea today is largely limited to preventing regime collapse.

In particular, China fears that a sudden North Korean collapse could destabilize its northeastern provinces or result in a unified Korean Peninsula strategically aligned with the U.S., a far more perilous geopolitical risk than the status quo. Thus, China prefers maintaining North Korea as a buffer state. Unlike the Soviet Union, China's contemporary regional power projection does not require a passage through the Korean Peninsula. Thus, it maintains a balanced strategy, sustaining basic level of relations with both Koreas. Despite the fact that China has been the most decisive contributor to North Korea's survival since the 1990s, the bilateral relationship has remained at arm's length. In this sense, North Korea-China relations can be described as structurally stable yet constrained from evolving into a tightly knit alliance, with sporadic fluctuations continuing within these bounds.

Two exceptional moments of deviation warrant attention: North Korea's brinkmanship during its nuclear weapons development, and the inter-Korean détente initiatives under the Moon Jae-in administration. These efforts to revise the status quo, whether by Pyongyang alone or jointly by the two Koreas, prompted China to temporarily intensify its engagement with North Korea. From Beijing's standpoint, such "revisionist" initiatives emanating from the Peninsula—despite differing aims—represented "abnormalities" within a framework predicated on stability. Today, however, the momentum for and impact of for Peninsula-led change have significantly waned.

Following the collapse of the 2019 Hanoi Summit, North Korea declared a "new path," signaling a strategic recalibration. This decision appears rooted in Pyongyang's perception that Washington's strategic aim was not rapprochement but rather to provoke deterioration in North Korea-U.S. relations as a means of bolstering trilateral security cooperation among the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, and thereby tightening pressure on China. In other words, North Korea reconfirmed that great-power dynamics surrounding the Peninsula are heavily biased toward preserving the status quo. In response, Pyongyang doubled down on "independent diplomacy" and accelerated nuclear force modernization, prompting a corresponding reduction in Chinese engagement.

Therefore, the so-called "abnormal North Korea-China relations" narrative may more accurately reflect a 'structural reversion' to the historical baseline of their relationship.

Another distinguishing feature of the contemporary era is the relatively stable and amicable nature of current China-Russia relations. This reduces the likelihood of Sino-Russian conflict directly influencing North Korea, as it did during the Cold War. That said, both Pyongyang and Moscow harbor latent anxieties about the deepening asymmetry in their respective relationships with Beijing, this providing a shared rationale for strategic collaboration.

Still, the more salient variable today is the complex geopolitical calculus among great powers concerning the endgame of the Russia-Ukraine war. Russia's tightening relations with North Korea may be interpreted as an attempt to expand its strategic leverage and complicate Western planning—going beyond operation level cooperation. For its part, Pyongyang seems intent on using closer ties with Moscow not merely to gain material support, but also as a long-term hedge: seeking to exploit shifts in the war's trajectory to carve out a more favorable strategic position.

This does not, however, signal an imminent return to North Korea-U.S. engagement. Prior to the Hanoi fallout, Pyongyang had pursued normalization with Washington as a revisionist gambit. Since then, it appears to have pivoted toward a strategy of hostile coexistence, treating antagonism with the U.S. as a source of internal and external stability. Recent proposals such as 'nuclear freeze for sanctions relief' or trilateral rapprochement among Seoul, Pyongyang, and Washington are not entirely off the table, but they rest on questionable assumptions. North Korea is more likely to focus on ultra-long-term strategies tailored to structural transformations—such as inflection points in U.S.-China relations or the emergence of a new global order—rather than any near- or mid-term engagement with the United States.

Paradoxically, this strategic posture explains why China and Russia are reluctant to transfer advanced military technologies to Pyongyang. As long as the Sino-Russian partnership remains solid, neither state faces a pressing security crisis. Moreover, excessive military empowerment of North Korea could elevate its autonomy to destabilizing levels, thus introducing new variables that Beijing, already entangled in disputes over the South and East China Seas and Taiwan, would prefer to avoid. Russia, mired in a costly war in the western Eurasian theater, similarly has limited appetite for instability in the Far East.

While China and Russia may occasionally stage "performed intimacy" with North Korea to extract diplomatic leverage, both will likely draw the line at enabling actions that could drag them into direct conflict. Unless the U.S.-South Korea-Japan trilateral alliance crosses a structural tipping point, or the United States experiences unmistakable decline leading to renewed Sino-Russian rivalry, there is scant strategic incentive for China or Russia to equip North Korea with high-end weapons systems.

IV. Strategic Implications of North Korea-China-Russia Dynamics for South Korea

It is imperative not to interpret recent developments through an overly binary lens that reduces North Korea-China relations to being either "normal" or "abnormal." Such dichotomous thinking risks clouding strategic judgment. Likewise, it would be premature to construe the tightening of North Korea-Russia ties as evidence of a structural alliance. While some level of quid pro quo—such as North Korea providing munitions, manpower, or other forms of support—is conceivable, it is equally plausible that Russia could eventually downgrade its valuation of North Korea to the level it assigned to Armenia in the early 2020s, should strategic circumstances shift. Ongoing, rigorous analysis of North Korea-China-Russia relations must center on core variables such as great-power politics and geopolitics, rather than episodic signals alone.

For South Korea, this necessitates a dual-track approach: it must simultaneously explore channels for strategic communication with China and maintain robust alliances with traditional partners. Given Beijing's structural preference for stability on the Peninsula, Seoul could find openings for collaborative engagement should it present, and proactively act on, a coherent vision for regional management. Even Russia, prior to the Ukraine war and Seoul's enhanced cooperation with NATO, had shown interest in cultivating ties with South Korea. Today, high-level dialogue between Washington and Moscow persists, suggesting the possibility of diplomatic space for Seoul-Moscow engagement as exit strategies from the Ukraine conflict are considered.

Thus, South Korea must seize such openings to secure diplomatic flexibility that aligns with evolving strategic conditions. By doing so, it can mitigate the security risks posed by intensified great-power rivalry.

In sum, Seoul must resist the myopic tendency to interpret the current distance between Pyongyang and Beijing as either a 'definitive rupture' or a 'fleeting opportunity.' Instead, it must ground its foreign and security policy in a balanced understanding of long-term strategic trends, structural dynamics in great-power relations, and the interplay between North Korea's objectives and its systemic position. Only through such calibrated understanding can South Korea fortify its diplomatic leverage and cultivate a truly autonomous foreign and security capacity. ■

References

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 1956. "Economic Rehabilitation of North Korea 1954–56." CIA-RDP79-01093A001100010001-5. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP79-01093A001100010001-5.pdf.

CIA. 1985. "North Korea's Air Force: Impact of Soviet Deliveries." CIA-RDP86T00590R000400600002-4. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86T00590R000400600002-4.pdf.

Radchenko, Sergey. 2024. "The Vietnam War and the Sino-Soviet Split." In The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, ed. Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, 529–548. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shen, Zhihua. 2020. "Revisiting Stalin's and Mao's Motivations in the Korean War." Wilson Center. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/revisiting-stalins-and-maos-motivations-korean-war?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Shen, Zhihua and Yafeng Xia. 2012. "China and the Post-War Reconstruction of North Korea, 1953–1961." NKIDP Working Paper No. 4. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/misc/NKIDP_Working_Paper_4_China_and_the_Postwar_Reconstruction_of_North_Korea.pdf.

Shin, Jong Ho et al. 2020. "Risks to the Korean Peninsula from U.S.-China Strategic Conflict and South Korea's Comprehensive Response Strategy." Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU).

Wilson Center Digital Archive. 1975. "Record Regarding Kim Il-Sung's Visit to Beijing, 18–26 April 1975." Wilson Center Digital Archive. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/record-regarding-kim-il-sungs-visit-beijing-18-26-april-1975?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

Zhang, Xiaoming. 2015. Deng Xiaoping's Long War: The Military Conflict between China and Vietnam, 1979–1991. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

■ Jaewoo JUN is Associate Research Fellow at the Global Strategy Division of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA).

■ Translated and edited by Chaerin KIM, Research Assistant
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