Trump Putin Regime ‘Acknowledges North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons’ Adds South Korea’s Shipbuilding Industry as a ‘Weapons Supplier’
North Korea provided Russia with 9 million shells in the Ukraine War, and the Trump regime pointed out that South Korea’s shipbuilding industry was strengthening the US Navy’s strategy of ‘sharing weapons and ammunition with allies’ due to South Korea’s additional burden of defense costs.
The Yomiuri reported on the 31st that “the first report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), which monitors the implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea, revealed that North Korea provided up to 9 million shells to Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2024.”
The report stated that North Korea also provided ballistic missiles, anti-tank missiles, and mobile erector launchers (TELs) since September 23, and in return, Russia provided air defense systems, electronic warfare equipment, and operational methods since November 24.
Victor Cha, a professor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that if Trump’s “America First” excludes nuclear negotiations and leads to “naval reinforcement to protect the U.S. vicinity,” “South Korea can advocate a new burden-sharing agreement in which it supplies weapons and ammunition in the form of additional payments to allies, and if it transfers high-quality weapons and military supplies with subsidies from the Korean government, it can significantly increase the U.S. stockpile and prevent a shortage of defense industries,” revealing the existing military reinforcement alliance strategy on the 29th, in addition to the additional cost of $1 billion.
In an interview on the 15th in the “Time” on the 29th, presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung stated that “North Korea’s nuclear capabilities have reached a balance of terror with South Korea’s powerful conventional weapons,” and that it is a “conventional weapons powerhouse.”
On the 8th, Lee Jae-myung's foreign affairs advisor Kim Hyun-jong visited the White House and met with the NSC deputy advisor. Immediately after that, he stood on the wall with the White House in the background and told Korean reporters that the US's approach to North Korea was "a violation of UN resolutions, and I hope North Korea will stop launching now."
He added, "Personally, I think we need to take measures to further strengthen our asymmetric conventional weapons so that we can respond when necessary." He announced a "conventional weapons reinforcement system."
The announcement that day was 'Trump regime and It appears to be a secret deal between the Lee Jae-myung regime and the North Korean nuclear program.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegset said at a Singapore defense ministers' meeting on the 31st that "China must make it clear to everyone that it is preparing to potentially use its military force to change the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific," and pressured allies in the Indo-Pacific to spend more on their own defense needs, Reuters reported.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un detained shipyard officials responsible for a major accident during the launch of a new warship, Reuters reported on the 25th, citing the Korean Central News Agency.
Reuters reported that "Leader Kim Jong-un, who witnessed the launch failure that crippled a 5,000-ton warship at the launching ceremony, said the accident damaged the dignity of the country and declared that those responsible would be punished."
In his contribution to Foreign Affairs, Professor Cha stated, "Trump may even declare a new Eurasian 'deal of the century', which would expand commercial and energy connections to Korea by promoting joint investments with Japan and South Korea to move beyond promoting the transport of weapons through the railway connection between Russia and North Korea (which was revived from a long-dormant state in 2022 to supply weapons to Russia for the Ukrainian war) to the transport of other goods."
Professor Cha said that for the strategy of “recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state,” “as an additional confidence-building measure for the alliance, President Trump could double down on his interest in narrowing the shipbuilding gap with China by encouraging Korean and Japanese shipbuilding to meet the US’s temporary demand for strategic commercial fleets and delegating allied shipyards to service US vessels,” and “as a structure that receives help from allies to close the gap in the balance of naval power with China,” and this is likely to increase conflict between China and South Korea over the US military’s jurisdiction over the shipbuilding industry.
Professor Cha continued, “An international project to reorganize this network to Seoul and beyond would satisfy Moscow’s long-held desire to connect the Russian Far East with the economies of Northeast Asia,” and “the railway would provide revenue to North Korea and facilitate long-stalled economic exchanges between the two Koreas, and the scale of this deal could encourage President Trump to make it happen in terms of its performance as a major geopolitical deal due to the potential commercial opportunities it could provide for Trump’s family businesses.”
President Trump has already repeatedly referred to North Korea as a “nuclear state,” and Rubio, who is also Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor, has newly defined North Korea as a “nuclear-armed North Korea,” effectively changing the 30-year U.S. policy of denying the regime’s nuclear status.
Professor Cha said, “The Trump administration is likely to view nuclear negotiations with North Korea through the prism of ‘America First,’ which focuses more on reducing the most proximate threat to the U.S. homeland than on nuclear disarmament, rather than the step-by-step process the U.S. undertook in negotiations with North Korea in 1994 and 2005.”
He added, “The core of this agreement will be a ban on North Korea’s nuclear weapons testing, ICBM development, and fissile material production.”
Regarding Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda, Professor Cha said, “He will seek to expand the scope of the Korean Peninsula by linking peace on the Korean Peninsula with peace in Ukraine, not narrowing it down.” He also said that North Korea, which accounts for 50% of the Russian ammunition used in the Ukraine War, and cutting off additional supplies of ammunition to Russia and allowing Putin to recapture the territory lost in Kursk will help Trump reduce US spending on Ukraine and pressure Putin to stop fighting, and the ceasefire in Europe will be better maintained if the Russian military is no longer reinforced by North Korean military supplies.
He noted the negotiations to ‘cut off North Korean ammunition supplies,’ and predicted that the Trump administration would be unlikely to approach this. Professor Cha said that Trump’s preferred ambivalence toward the USFK could be consistent with the US Department of Defense’s plan to shift away from deterrence on the Korean Peninsula and instead focus on defending Taiwan, and that the prospect of ending two wars, one in Asia and one in Europe, and enthusiasm for the Nobel Peace Prize are enough to force Trump to take unprecedented action. pointed out.
However, regarding Korea and Japan, he said, “If the US forces in Korea withdraw, local demands for Korea to possess its own nuclear weapons will increase, and Trump can support this movement by renegotiating the existing civilian nuclear agreement to allow enrichment and reprocessing, and prevent nuclear weaponization while providing Korea with fissile material for nuclear bombs,” and “Through the ‘nuclear latent period,’ Korea’s ability to deter threats to the Korean Peninsula will be strengthened, and through this, the US will be able to focus on the threat from China.”
The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), which monitors the implementation of UN sanctions on North Korea, was established on April 24 in response to the disbandment of the UN Security Council expert panel that monitors sanctions on North Korea.
Professor Victor Cha’s contribution is titled <Prepare for Big, Bold, and Very Bad North Korea Negotiations> and the subtitle is <Trump Wants to Win, Kim Jong-un has more influence than ever before>, and Victor Cha is the chairman of the Song Min-hye Foundation, a professor at Georgetown University, and the chair of the Department of Geopolitics and Foreign Policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of The Black Box: Demystifying the Study of Korean Unification and North Korea, and was a member of the Defense Policy Committee in the Democratic Biden administration and the NSC Asia Director in the Republican George W. Bush administration.
<Lee Jae-myung asks the White House to ‘intervene in the election’, disparages Korea for its military buildup as a ‘Japanese warlord’, May 9, 2025>
<Lee Jae-myung's ‘North Korea hotline’ Moon Chung-in ‘impossible’ Victor Cha ‘for Trump-Putin deal’, May 30, 2025>
<Lee Jae-myung's 'North Korea hotline' Moon Chung-in ‘impossible’ Victor Cha See 'for Trump Putin deal', 2025. 5. 30>