Opinion

As US-North Korea diplomacy falters, will Kim Jong-un look to boost ties with Russia?

After failure of Hanoi summit between Kim and Donald Trump relations between Pyongyang and Washington are in a perilous state, says Ankit Panda

And the time may be ripe for North Korea to revitalise its long relationship with Russia

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Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un failed to find any common ground when they met in Hanoi. Photo: AFP

Ankit Panda is an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the Defense Posture Project at the Federation of American Scientists, a Senior Editor at The Diplomat, an online magazine on Asia-Pacific affairs, and a Contributing Editor at War on the Rocks.

Published: 5:00pm, 31 Mar 2019Updated: 11:03pm, 31 Mar 2019

The diplomatic process between the United States and North Korea that began last year is fragile after the collapse of talks between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Hanoi. One more wrong move by either side could bring the entire house of cards tumbling down, taking South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s inter-Korean dreams with it.

We came perilously close to that with the recent confusion over possible new US sanctions. Trump tweeted that he had asked his Treasury department to withdraw new “large scale” sanctions, which turned out to be a much smaller set of two designations against Chinese companies.

In the meantime, geospatial analysts of North Korea observed, even before the Hanoi summit, that Pyongyang had reassembled two important sites that it had dismantled last year following the Singapore summit between Trump and Kim. Beginning in mid-February, a missile engine test stand and a satellite launch vehicle assembly building at the Sohae launch site were put back together.