Quick Take: North Korea’s Coverage of Russian War Against Ukraine

In a speech at a Korean Individuals’s Military convention on November 15, Kim Jong Un stated the USA was “sustaining their [its] navy help to Ukraine” and claimed “the USA and different Western international locations are utilizing Ukraine as a shock power within the struggle in opposition to Russia.” This speech was carried for each home and exterior audiences. Kim’s uncommon, however not unprecedented, direct reference to the Russia-Ukraine struggle provides a superb alternative to overview how North Korean propaganda retailers have dealt with this subject because the struggle started.

North Korea has taken two broadly completely different approaches to the protection of the struggle, relying on the viewers.[1] Retailers focusing on exterior audiences have been fast and decisive in reporting on the struggle and siding with Russia. In contrast, domestically oriented media have been first noticed to say the Ukraine scenario in March 2023, greater than a 12 months after the struggle started.[2] North Korea turned extra forward-leaning in its home protection of the struggle as its relationship with Russia continued to deepen.

North Korea’s cautious and extra calibrated strategy to the struggle in Ukraine vis-à-vis the home public signifies sensitivities surrounding the subject. In that vein, it must be no shock the nation’s home media, in contrast to its exterior web sites, stay silent on the extent of North Korea’s position within the struggle.

Exterior Versus Home Protection

Exterior retailers reacted inside days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Two days after the invasion, the Overseas Ministry web site carried a bylined article blaming the USA and supporting Russia’s place on Ukraine. An official Overseas Ministry assertion reiterated this similar line two days later. North Korean exterior platforms, led by the Overseas Ministry web site, have since carried articles and statements in keeping with Russia’s place on Ukraine, together with North Korean Overseas Ministry officers’ press statements immediately voicing help for Russia. Pyongyang’s fast and decisive help for Russia’s struggle in opposition to Ukraine is according to one of many earliest indicators of its overseas coverage reorientation in August 2021, when the Overseas Ministry web site began to commonly carry studies and articles introducing or supporting Russian positions on worldwide and overseas coverage points.

Home media’s first noticed reference to the struggle in Ukraine was in a celebration day by day article on March 30, 2023 citing the Chinese language Overseas Ministry’s declare that the USA was encouraging the “Ukrainian disaster” for financial advantages. Home media have since printed information studies, articles, and commentaries that aligned with Russia’s place on Ukraine and have been important of the USA and the West.

Home media protection of the struggle in Ukraine has elevated since March 2024, shortly after the Overseas Ministry indicated, based mostly on the overseas minister’s journey to Russia in January 2024, that Putin could be visiting Pyongyang and a brand new treaty could be signed. It was additionally after this announcement that home media began to offer extra particulars in regards to the struggle and carry Overseas Ministry statements on the struggle in Ukraine, which had hitherto been reserved for exterior web sites. Choe Son Hui’s Russia go to in January 2024 appears to have given North Korea higher confidence in its relationship with Moscow, prompting it to offer clearer indicators domestically on its place on the struggle.

That however, home media shunned immediately voicing help for the struggle. In two situations, they not directly acknowledged North Korea’s help for Russia’s “particular navy operation” by citing Putin (July 2023) or Russia (January 2024). Putin’s go to to Pyongyang in June 2024, nonetheless, was a turning level. In a departure from previous observe, a celebration day by day editorial explicitly voiced “full help and encouragement for the particular navy operation in opposition to Ukraine” on the day of Putin’s scheduled arrival in Pyongyang. In his talks with the visiting Russian vice protection minister the next month, Kim Jong Un himself expressed “robust help for and agency solidarity with” Russia on “the particular navy operations in Ukraine,” echoing the identical promise he made through the summit with Putin.