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25 November 2022
South Korean defense chief Lee Jong-sup called on Southeast Asian countries to support the denuclearization of and negotiations with North Korea, according to a press release from Seoul’s Ministry of National Defense (MND) on Thursday.
Addressing the 9th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM)-Plus meeting in Cambodia on Wednesday, Lee warned that North Korea’s “nuclear and missile provocations,” including the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Friday, are serious threats to peace and stability in the Korean Peninsula and to the wider international community.
Representatives from the U.S., Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines were among those at the meeting who joined South Korea in condemning the DPRK’s recent ballistic missile launches as a direct violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and a challenge to international security, the press release said.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin also reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to working with the 10-member Southeast Asian bloc to address regional challenges including nuclear proliferation, according to a Department of Defense readout.
But U.S.-China competition and cross-strait tensions between Beijing and Taiwan may be more concerning to ASEAN at this point, says Hunter Marston, an adjunct research fellow with La Trobe Asia.
“I don’t think ASEAN countries see North Korea as a direct security concern,” he told NK News.
“ASEAN states have friendly to neutral relations with North Korea and are not really the object of Pyongyang’s anger,” he said.
Many Southeast Asian countries have long maintained diplomatic and business relations with North Korea, and Pyongyang has sent representatives to ASEAN-related meetings in the past since they are relatively neutral multilateral platforms to engage with the international community.
Ties have been strained on occasion, such as Malaysia’s decision to temporarily suspend diplomatic relations with the DPRK in 2017 after the assassination of Kim Jong Un’s brother Kim Jong Nam in Kuala Lumpur.
Southeast Asian countries also participated in U.N. Security Council sanctions against North Korea following previous missile and nuclear tests, but many of them still maintain friendly relations with Pyongyang.
These ties and the region’s relative neutrality could perhaps play a useful role in restarting wider international diplomacy with the DPRK, Marston told NK News.
“A lot of these Southeast Asian countries, because they don’t see North Korea as a threat and because they don’t really have ‘skin in the game,’ so to speak, could play a proactive diplomatic role,” he said.
He cited the cases of Singapore and Vietnam, which played host to U.S.-North Korea summits in 2018 and 2019 respectively, as examples of how these states can potentially use their perceived neutrality to bring “enemy states” together as a “diplomatic convenor.” #
Source: https://www.nknews.org/2022/11/seoul-calls-on-asean-to-support-denuclearization-of-north-korea/
