Kim Jong Un as guest of honor at the Far East Economic Forum
The New York Times and Financial Times both today speak about a meeting between Vladimir Putin and North Korean president Kim Jong Un in Vladivostok during the coming days. Buried in their reports is the suggestion that this may occur simultaneously with the Far East Economic Forum which opens in Vladivostok on Monday, 11 September and continues through the 13th. Of course, neither publication says a word about the Forum itself. Meanwhile on today’s Russian state television (Sixty Minutes) I heard confirmation that Kim is expected in Russia as early as on the 10th.
The Economic Forum is clearly a determinant of the timing of Kim’s visit to Russia. But then so are the American-South Korean military exercises, the port call of a U.S. nuclear submarine to South Korea and the observation by Kim last week when he visited his own naval headquarters that the nearby seas presently hold the world’s biggest concentration of warships, and that North Korea would respond to this threat.
The focus in the NYT and FT reports is on the likelihood that the two leaders will discuss arms sales and other forms of cooperation. This follows on remarks a couple of days ago by U.S. State Department spokesman Kirby to that effect.
The idea of Russia’s procuring military supplies, in particular artillery shells, from Pongyang was officially dismissed by the Russian ambassador to North Korea. However, on today’s Sixty Minutes show a panelist who is a military expert confirmed that Russia intends to purchase vast quantities of artillery shells, saying that North Korea has “millions of shells” suitable for Russian use in its storage and that these could be quite handy right now, when it appears that the Ukrainian counteroffensive still has some wind in its sails. Moreover, the logistics of delivery to Russia could not be simpler: using the very same railway line that Kim Jong Un takes when his armored train carries him across the border on his way to Vladivostok.
Let us now turn our attention to the Far East Forum. I have looked over the program on their website and the general impression is that it is being run very much the same way as the St Petersburg International Economic Forum was this past June. There is an enormous number of panel discussions covering every imaginable topic with respect to the economic, social, educational development of the Russian Far East, its relations with neighbors including China and Mongolia, relations with ASEAN and with countries further afield such as India. As regards participation, the panelists are overwhelmingly Russian, though there are token representatives from a variety of Asian countries including Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines. The single largest contingent of foreign panelists comes from China. The highest ranking foreign guests in the program are ambassadors, with the exception of Mongolia, which is sending a Vice Prime Minister, who is Minister of the Economy.
On the Russian side, within the business delegations to the Forum, the biggest net worth participant is the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose industrial assets are concentrated in Siberia. He is on the panel entitled “On Siberia’s Role in Turning East,” where he is listed as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Stolypin Institute for Economy of Growth.”
The most relevant panel discussion to current events comes on the last day of the Forum and is entitled “A Global Alternative to Western Dominance: The Contours of the Future.” If I have any regret at missing this Forum, it is not being able to watch the give and take between such panelists as Sergei Karaganov (by video), the pseudo academic, Russian nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin (also by video), Ambassador Plenipotentiary Maria Zakharova and Irina Yarovaya, the very smart, very patriotic Deputy Chairman of the State Duma. But Vladivostok is very far away and the price of an admission ticket to the Forum (which does not give you the right to be present at the Plenary Session where Putin will speak) is the tidy sum of 8,000 USD. Curiously, those paying in rubles get in for half price (400,000 rbls).
Of course, at this point no one can say whether Kim will be given the podium at the Forum. But his likely presence in Vladivostok for his meeting with Putin at this moment which will be watched by the entire world shows that Russia’s emerging relationship with North Korea is anything but surreptitious. Mr Kirby and the U.S. State Department are likely as much in the dark on what will transpire as the rest of us.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023