SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Belarus’ foreign minister is to visit North Korea this week, the two countries announced Monday, a trip expected to focus on discussions of trilateral cooperation involving Russia in the face of their separate confrontations with the West.
Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov will come to North Korea on Tuesday for a three-day trip at the invitation of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported in a one-sentence report. Belarus’ Foreign Ministry issued a similar brief statement on his planned trip.
Neither country provided details of Ryzhenkov’s itinerary in North Korea, though observers say he’s expected to meet his North Korean counterpart Choe Son Hui. Ryzhenkov would be Belarus’ first foreign minster to travel to North Korea, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry.
Koh Yu-hwan, a former president of South Korea’s government-funded Institute for National Unification, said Ryzhenkov’s meeting with North Korean officials will likely center on establishing trilateral North Korea-Belarus-Russia partnerships, because North Korea recently signed a major defense pact with Russia and Belarus has long-running close ties with Russia.
In June, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang and signed a deal stipulating mutual military assistance if either country is attacked.
The U.S., South Korea and their partners also accuse North Korea of having supplied conventional arms to Russia for its war in Ukraine in return for military and economic assistance. Both North Korea and Russia have denied that accusation.
Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, for his part, allowed Russia to use his country as a staging ground for the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, Russia also moved some of its tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.
The three countries have been grappling with Western sanctions and deepening international isolation — North Korea over its advancing nuclear program, Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and Belarus over its support of the Russian invasion and its 2020 fraudulent election, as well as human rights abuses.
During a meeting with Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi last September, Lukashenko suggested that Belarus could join Russia and North Korea in “three-way cooperation.”
In April, the vice foreign minister of North Korea and Belarus met in Pyongyang and agreed to strengthen high-level contacts and visits, according to North Korea’s state media.