The Kim regime does not have many friends. Now a close ally of North Korea also takes on diplomatic relationships with the sharpest rival of the dictatorship.
Every year on April 15 North Korea The “Day of the Sun”-in memory of state founder Kim Il-Sung, which was born that day in 1912. For the citizens of the isolated country, it is the most important holiday of the year and for state heads from allied countries a good opportunity to be connected to the KIM regime. North Korea’s state media report again this year gifts from all over the world that arrive in Pyongyang on the occasion of the “day of the sun” – flower baskets from Nigeria, Laos or Russia, for example.
Only for the first time in Syria, no flower greetings are allowed in North Korea for the first time in years. Because with the fall of Bashar al-Assad at the end of 2024, Kim Jong-Un, North Korea’s dictator and grandson Kim Il-Sung, lost one of the closest allies. Even more: A few days ago, Syria changed the camps. The government there has recorded diplomatic relationships with South Korea, the arch enemy of the KIM regime.
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Tae-Yul had traveled to Damascus, where he signed a joint explanation for the inclusion of relationships with his Syrian counterpart Asaad Al-Shaibani. South Korea is ready to reconcile Syria in reconstruction Infrastructure destroyed from years of civil war Cho said at the appointment.
Kim Jong-Uns North Korea and Syria: Close allies for years
So far, North Korea has not officially commented on the step. However, one can imagine that Kim Jong-un It is not very pleased with the change of sides of the former long -term ally of Syria. Because with South Korea, the Kim dictatorship is still officially in the state of war, a bloody war between the two neighboring countries was only frozen in 1953 with a ceasefire. In recent years, Kim had further tightened his rhetoric to the government in Seoul and, among other things, had street and rail connections reduced to the south.
The Syria of the Assads has been one of the closest partners of the internationally isolated KIM dictatorship since the 1960s, and at the end of November Assad wrote in a letter to Kim Jong-UN that he wanted “to strengthen the friendly and cooperative relationships between Syria and North Korea in the interest of the fraternal peoples of both countries”. Soad’s fall has not commented on North Korea at all. Only at the beginning of February did Kim Jong-Un refer to the country in a speech together with the Gaza strip and Ukraine as a “scene of global geopolitical conflicts and confrontations”.
With Russia, North Korea has a new partner at its side
Hardly any other country has kept as firmly with the Kim regime in recent years as Assads Syria-even before Pyongyang found a new partner with Russia. In the United Nations General Assembly, Damascus regularly voted against resolutions that condemned human rights violations in North Korea.
Above all, Assad helped the Kims to avoid international sanctions. Syria keeps appearing in the reports of a UN committee that monitors the punitive measures against North Korea. In 2019, for example, hundreds of North Koreans are said to have been brought to Syria to work. Much of the money generated in this way usually ends up in the pockets of the North Korean government.
In return, North Korea provided the Assad regime with plenty of weapons in the years of the civil war. Pyongyang sold air-floor missiles and parts for ballistic rockets to the Syrian government, among other things. Material for the production of chemical weapons, as Assad used several times against the Syrian civilian population, also found its way from North Korea to Damascus. In addition, individual North Korean soldiers are said to have fought against insurgents on the side of the Syrian government. At the beginning of the nineties, North Korea also helped the Syrians to build a nuclear power plant. (SH)
