Kim Jong Un’s attendance at China’s Victory Day parade reflects multiple objectives from Pyongyang’s perspective: mending ties with Beijing that had lagged behind its relationship with Moscow, pressuring Russia for stronger support, and showcasing trilateral solidarity with China and Russia to enhance bargaining leverage against the United States. Domestically, Kim sought to highlight his achievement of elevating North Korea into a “strategic state” that stands alongside major powers, while externally aiming to stir concerns in South Korea that ROK-U.S. and trilateral security cooperation with Japan might only worsen inter-Korean hostility. For China, the invitation served to demonstrate DPRK–China–Russia alignment as a tool in its rivalry with Washington, reaffirm Beijing’s influence over Pyongyang, and counter U.S.-led security cooperation in the region, with the added aim of constraining Seoul’s reinforcement of the ROK-U.S. alliance.

In response, South Korea should strengthen the ROK-U.S. alliance and sustain ROK-U.S.-Japan trilateral security cooperation, thereby enhancing leverage vis-à-vis China and Russia and creating conditions for future engagement with them. South Korea must stress that ROK-U.S.–Japan cooperation is not hostile to specific regimes but a response to actions undermining the international and regional order. Vigilance is needed against the possibility that China or Russia may tolerate or even support North Korea’s nuclear program; to prevent the normalization of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, South Korea should emphasize both the direct threat to the peninsula and the risk of collapse of the global nonproliferation regime. Coordination with Washington should also ensure that sanctions relief or overly rapid U.S.–North Korea rapprochement is avoided, while reaffirming the shared goal of “Complete Denuclearization of North Korea” and pressing for visible extended deterrence measures such as tactical nuclear redeployment. Finally, South Korea and the United States should develop joint responses to new types of provocations—such as potential KADIZ incursions—used by Pyongyang to exploit trilateral cooperation.

This article is an English Summary of Asan Issue Brief (2025-28).

('김정은의 중국 전승절 참석과 향후 북-중-러 관계 전망’)