Clifford McCoy
With the re-establishment of diplomatic ties, Myanmar and North Korea, two of Asia’s most reclusive and abusive military-run regimes, have formed what some regional observers fear has already become a destabilizing strategic alliance.
Chief among the concerned parties will be the United States, which has referred to North Korea as part of an “axis of evil” and labeled Myanmar an “outpost of tyranny”.
The agreement re-establishing formal bilateral relations was announced on Thursday after a two-hour meeting between North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong-il and Myanmar’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kyaw Thu. The four-person North Korean delegation arrived in Yangon on Wednesday for a three-day visit and the move was highly anticipated.
The agreement could make Pyongyang the first country to open an embassy in Myanmar’s new capital of Naypyidaw. Other nations have so far maintained their embassies in the old capital Yangon. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said that China, which shares borders and maintains cordial relations with both countries, is “happy to see and welcome the improvement in bilateral ties”.
Myanmar, then known as Burma, formally severed relations with Pyongyang in 1983, after three North Korean agents planted a bomb that killed 18 visiting South Korean officials, including the then-deputy prime minister So Suk-chan and three other cabinet ministers. Burmese security forces at the time killed one of the agents, Captain Kim Chi-o, and captured two others, Major Zin Mo and Captain Kang Min-chul. Zin Mo was hanged two years later, while Kang was sentenced to life imprisonment and remains in Insein Prison.
Pyongyang tried on several occasions to re-establish diplomatic ties, but was consistently rebuffed. Burma’s reluctance to renew ties was only strengthened when two North Korean terrorists bombed South Korean-run Korean Airlines Flight 858 in Burmese airspace in 1987, killing all 115 people aboard. Bilateral trade, however, continued despite strained diplomatic relations.
After Burma’s military junta crushed pro-democracy protests in 1988, it moved to expand its armed forces both to fight insurgents in its border areas as well as to keep the civilian population under control. Weaponry was needed to equip the new units and Myanmar, as the country was officially renamed by the junta, began to search for new global arms suppliers willing to circumvent the arms embargoes it faced from many Western countries.
North Korea, which has a large domestic arms industry and a willingness to accept barter trade for weapons, was a good alternative source. Economic mismanagement and famines in North Korea have left it eager to acquire foreign currency, but also primary resources such as rice, timber and marine resources, all of which Myanmar exports.
An additional bonus was Pyongyang’s willingness to defy the international community and sell weapons to Myanmar’s generals. Compared with Western arms, North Korea’s are cheap, often copies of proven Russian and Chinese designs. These weapons are also similar to weapons already in the Myanmar military’s inventory, making them easy for soldiers to operate and maintain.
Secretive military ties
While diplomatic ties were severed, clandestine military ties were apparently re-established in 1999. That coincided with the Myanmar military’s director of procurement making a low-profile visit to North Korea that same year. In November 2000, a Myanmar delegation made a secret visit to Pyongyang and held talks with high-ranking officials of the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces, according to Australian defense analyst and Myanmar military expert Andrew Selth.
In June 2001, a North Korean delegation led by vice foreign minister Park Kil-yon met with State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) deputy defense minister Khin Maung Win to discuss cooperation between the two countries’ defense industries. Low-key, military-to-military ties have intensified in recent years, with Pyongyang providing weapons, military technology transfers and expertise in underground tunneling used for concealing secret military installations. The arms trade between Myanmar and North Korea has so far been limited to conventional arms and technology transfers, including a major purchase of 130mm M46 field guns in 1999.
Myanmar’s most advanced weaponry procurement to date includes anti-ship and surface-to-surface missiles, which are reportedly being fixed on the military’s new class of coastal patrol boats. There have also been frequent unexplained visits by North Korean freighters to Myanmar ports in recent years, which have been shrouded in secrecy and tight security.
This has raised suspicions of potentially more sophisticated North Korean arms deliveries, which have been stoked by reports of North Korean technicians based at Myanmar’s military bases. Reportedly, 15-20 North Korean technicians have worked at Myanmar’s Monkey Point naval base since 2002. Some experts speculate they are there to help install missiles on new naval patrol boats.
North Korea is world-renowned for its expertise in building underground military installations and it appears to be passing these capabilities to the SPDC. A message intercepted by Asian intelligence agencies last year from the new Myanmar capital Naypyidaw confirmed the arrival of North Korean tunneling experts in October.
The SPDC is believed to be building an extensive underground bunker complex beneath its new capital. North Korean experts were also involved in the construction of a massive bunker in 2003 near the central town of Taungdwingyi. The bunker complex, experts say, is apparently part of the SPDC’s fears of a preemptive attack by the US, along the lines of its invasion of Iraq.
There have been unconfirmed reports that Myanmar has also tried to acquire more exotic weapons from North Korea. Analyst Selth detailed in his 2004 Burma’s North Korean Gambit how the SPDC apparently opened discussions with Pyongyang in early 2002 to purchase one or two small submarines. However, this endeavor was scrapped for unknown reasons in late 2002.
There is some belief among security analysts that the SPDC is interested in acquiring short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs). A series of unconfirmed reports has emerged that the military is interested in the North Korean Hwasong SRBM, a Scud-type missile with a range of up to 500 kilometers and a 770-kilogram conventional warhead.
It is unlikely that China would provide such advanced missile technology to Myanmar, which would likely rile the US and regional countries. North Korea, however, is unconcerned about piquing Washington and has already sold an estimated 300-350 ballistic missiles to foreign countries and readily makes parts and missile technology available on underground global markets.
The presence of ballistic missiles in Myanmar would likely elicit particularly strong reactions from Thailand and India. A recent report by Jane’s Defence Weekly that Thailand recently launched a new missile- and rocket-production program would appear to be a defensive reaction to Myanmar’s move to acquire North Korean missile technology.
Nuclear ambitions?
There has also been diplomatic speculation that North Korea is involved in the building of a nuclear test reactor in central Myanmar. The reactor was initially to be built with Russian assistance, but Moscow reportedly pulled out because of Myanmar’s inability to pay for the construction. Moreover, it remains unclear why aircraft from North Korea’s Air Koryu airline landed at military airfields in central Myanmar in 2003, or what North Korean technicians were doing at Myothit near Natmauk, upper Myanmar, around the same time.
Some diplomats are concerned that the SPDC may be interested in acquiring some sort of nuclear weapon, or at least obtaining enough nuclear material to make a so-called “dirty bomb”. The SPDC claims it wants a nuclear reactor for peaceful medical research and maybe to generate power and strongly maintains that it has no interest in making a nuclear bomb.
Some believe that the junta sees the potential upside to North Korea’s recent nuclear brinksmanship against the United States. Representatives of North Korea’s Daesong Economic Group were in Myanmar in 2003 and the company has a record of secretly proliferating nuclear and missile technology, including to Pakistan. Opposition media sources based in Thailand have also reported that the SPDC has been sending officers to North Korea for nuclear-related training, including 80 officers in November 2003.
These reports may be jumping the gun, as all the officers were members of the air defense and artillery divisions of the army and could have been sent to gain expertise in new artillery or surface-to-air missiles. Moreover, there has been some speculation by diplomats and intelligence officials that Myanmar may be paying for the arms and technology transfers with drugs. This connection has not been substantiated with hard proof, but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence.
A February 16 US Congressional Research Service report, “North Korea Crime-for-Profit Activities”, accused Pyongyang of involvement in heroin and methamphetamine smuggling and the production of counterfeit currency and cigarettes. North Korean heroin shipments have been interdicted in the past, but it remains unclear whether Pyongyang was the owner or merely the shipping agent of the narcotics.
There is at least some connection to Myanmar, though not necessarily to the SPDC. Heroin seized in Taiwan in 2002 and in Australia in 2003 was labeled with the Double-UO-Globe brand. This brand of opium is produced by the United Wa State Army, which operates in northern Myanmar. Although North Korea is believed to produce its own heroin and methamphetamines, it could be supplementing its own production with that from Myanmar.
A 2003 article in the Far Eastern Economic Review quoted US intelligence officials as saying North Korean agents had been seen in the Golden Triangle. While it is unlikely that the SPDC would directly hand drugs to North Korea, it has become clear in recent years that despite rhetoric to the contrary, the regime is involved in the production and trafficking of drugs within Myanmar and to neighboring countries. Army units have been accused of taxing the trade, providing protection to production laboratories, and allowing drug barons to invest money in legitimate businesses.
One advantage for North Korea in normalizing bilateral relations with Myanmar would be to establish a formal diplomatic channel to pressure the junta to crack down on North Korean refugees escaping across the Chinese border, traveling through Myanmar and across to Thailand, from where they are repatriated to South Korea. Growing refugee flows have become a point of embarrassment for Pyongyang and it undoubtedly would like to see the route through Myanmar severed. Myanmar security forces would also likely have knowledge of the movement of North Korean refugees through their contacts with ethnic insurgent ceasefire groups along the Chinese border and hence would be in a position to interdict the refugees if ordered to do so.
Yet there are also risks to normalizing ties. South Korea has become one of Myanmar’s leading trade partners and a major investor, and establishing formal diplomatic relations with North Korea could risk antagonizing the budding commercial relationship. The decision will likely also be unpopular with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, particularly with member countries Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. Myanmar is a member of the grouping.
Myanmar’s apparent desire to acquire power-projection capabilities makes Thailand in particular nervous, considering the two traditional adversaries share long stretches of contested border areas and Bangkok has quietly provided sanctuary and support to armed ethnic insurgent groups. Myanmar’s army and Thai security forces have occasionally clashed in recent years.
Meanwhile, both Malaysia and Singapore would likely view any sort of North Korean military presence in the region as a destabilizing influence. Myanmar’s attempts to acquire SRBMs, submarines and nuclear capability from Pyongyang could spark a new arms race, one that few regional governments could afford.
The SPDC may be hoping that the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with North Korea will give it an ally against Western pressure, especially from the US. It may turn out, however, that the opposite is true. Both regimes have well-documented histories of human-rights abuses, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, human trafficking and forced labor, and establishing formal bilateral relations and strategic linkages will likely make the US and the European Union take greater notice of their interactions.
The US already views Myanmar as a rogue state and some US politicians called for adding Yangon to President George W Bush’s “axis of evil” after the SPDC’s violent attack in May 2003 on democratic opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s motorcade. Until now, Myanmar has not been a strategic concern to the US, but a substantial improvement in Myanmar’s military capabilities and closer ties with a proliferating North Korea could quickly change that calculus.
