The Korean Peninsula faced heightened uncertainty recently as China’s 80th Victory Day ceremony on Sept. 3 showcased the deepening ties between North Korean, Chinese, and Russian leadership. Analysts say North Korea’s strengthening relationships with Russia and China serve multiple goals: expanding nuclear and conventional weapons capabilities, evading existing sanctions through military cooperation, and boosting its global influence. Experts believe that after signing a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty in June 2024, and with the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, the Russia-North Korea relationship has become a “blood alliance.”
Recent prosecutorial cooperation
Last July, Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov and Kim Chol Won, head of North Korea’s Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office, met to renew their cooperation agreement and signed a 2024-2026 implementation plan. North Korea’s state news agency confirmed that Kim and his team visited Russia in August to discuss the partnership.
The agreement, first signed in 2010, has been systematically upgraded to deepen cooperation in three main areas. First, tackling advanced crimes and strengthening state control through legal support, training programs, personnel exchanges, and joint research. Second, modernizing both countries’ criminal justice systems through comprehensive case coverage, information sharing, and collaborative research. Third, expanding coordination on the international stage through standard cooperation frameworks and official diplomatic channels.
The two countries have committed to extensive law enforcement cooperation through 2026, targeting modern crimes including cryptocurrency fraud, corruption, abuse of power, and environmental violations. The partnership includes technology-focused crime response, workshops, and personnel exchanges. Russian officials plan to share cybercrime expertise with North Korea and invite North Korean prosecutors for hands-on training in Russia. This marks a significant shift from traditional military cooperation toward a comprehensive strategic partnership across law enforcement and judicial sectors.
What this means internationally
The strengthened prosecutorial ties between North Korea and Russia represent a joint effort to push back against external pressure. Personnel exchanges between their law enforcement agencies go beyond military or economic cooperation into judicial matters. Through prosecutorial agreements, they’re building institutional strength via personnel exchanges, shared crime-fighting experience and technology, and stronger responses to international crimes in emerging areas like digital and IT offenses.
This expanded criminal justice cooperation likely connects to efforts to create a new international cooperation model when dealing with global conflicts, potentially clashing with U.N. and other multilateral sanctions systems in crime and cyber areas. North Korea will likely use Russian expertise to modernize its prosecutorial and judicial systems, strengthen technical capabilities, and tighten internal state control.
The institutional cooperation poses serious long-term risks to global law enforcement and could significantly boost North Korea’s ability to hide criminal activities and dodge international sanctions. Security experts warn that these deepening partnerships may seriously undermine international judicial cooperation and weaken global legal standards. As the two countries strengthen independent law enforcement and information security alliances, new global risks emerge: fragmented cyber and crime response standards, increased power bloc confrontation, and better channels for recruiting and hiding non-state actors like hackers.
This cooperation will likely make Russia increasingly resistant to other countries’ requests for judicial cooperation on North Korean international crimes, including cybercrime and financial offenses. The partnership threatens to make judicial cooperation systems led by the U.N., South Korea, Japan, and the European Union ineffective against North Korean crimes, potentially creating legal safe havens for North Korean IT workers and criminal groups.
Russia has historically ignored international investigation requests about North Korean hacker activities and criminal organizations on its territory, often citing sovereignty to justify non-cooperation. With the strengthened cooperation agreement, analysts expect this resistance to international law enforcement will significantly intensify, making it even harder to combat transnational crime.
Sanctions evasion and global frameworks
Russia’s deeper legal and institutional cooperation with North Korea could dramatically expand North Korea’s ability to bypass international sanctions using Russian economic, cyber, financial, and legal networks. This worries international security experts about new sanctions evasion pathways. North Korea’s cyberattacks, cryptocurrency theft, and illegal trading could increasingly use Russian technical and financial networks for money laundering and concealment.
The cooperation threatens to make Russia both a pipeline and ally for North Korea’s sanctions evasion, potentially undermining years of international isolation efforts. If Russia uses its veto power or blocks North Korea sanctions implementation in the U.N. Security Council, experts predict sanctions will weaken significantly and monitoring systems could collapse.
Security analysts warn that deeper information technology and judicial cooperation between Russia and North Korea has far-reaching implications for international stability and legal frameworks. The strengthened partnership covers multiple problem areas: Security Council resolution violations, weakened international law accountability, deteriorating cybersecurity and criminal justice cooperation, and fundamental damage to legal order.
The collaboration directly challenges collective security systems and international peace mechanisms while increasing international calls for stronger accountability measures and coordinated responses. Creating an independent criminal justice cooperation system between Russia and North Korea could significantly conflict with existing global governance structures like the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime.
Legal violations and responsibility
Russia’s help in boosting North Korea’s capabilities against financial, digital asset, and IT crimes—including sharing investigative expertise—faces intense international legal scrutiny for potentially violating U.N. sanctions and fundamental international law principles. This cooperation risks violating Security Council resolutions on North Korea sanctions and the International Law Commission’s Article 16, which prohibits helping with internationally wrongful acts.
Russia’s legal, institutional, and technical support could significantly enhance North Korea’s sanctions evasion abilities, making discussions of international legal responsibility inevitable. Illegal military cooperation between the countries—including weapons trading, troop deployments, and advanced technology support—directly violates Security Council Resolution 1718 and related sanctions.
Sharing IT crime capabilities and transferring advanced technology may also fall under military and advanced technology sanctions categories. This “indirect support” potentially violates the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on State Responsibility, particularly Article 16’s ban on assisting internationally wrongful acts.
The principle of non-assistance to internationally wrongful acts means that when a state knowingly supports another country engaged in international wrongdoing, it shares responsibility under international law and may face international condemnation, sanctions, and diplomatic or legal responses. This principle is especially strong regarding violations of jus cogens—international law’s most fundamental norms.
South Korea’s policy challenges
The South Korean government must accelerate development of comprehensive security strategies based on rule of law to counter the growing threat from deepening North Korea-Russia cooperation. This means strengthening deterrence capabilities and enhancing international coordination frameworks, including cybersecurity measures and diversified diplomatic approaches based on balanced foreign policy.
South Korea needs to establish permanent tracking of independent sanctions on North Korean hacker organizations, proxy companies, and virtual asset-related entities. This includes blocking financial transactions, detecting and blocking virtual assets based on international standards, and introducing real-time tracking systems for hacking centers. South Korea should also strengthen the Mutual Legal Assistance system and establish working-level consultative bodies with allies.
Various additional measures are needed for North Korea sanctions policies: strengthening responses to North Korea’s new and advanced sanctions evasion methods, improving sanctions enforcement and international cooperation platforms, supplementing domestic and foreign laws and systems, and developing professional personnel.
Since North Korea evades or neutralizes sanctions through non-traditional methods like virtual assets, cybercrime, and illegal trading through cooperation with Russia and third countries, advanced tracking systems and legal response systems must be prepared through independent and alliance cooperation. Since multilateral sanctions systems like the U.N. have limitations, preparing effective independent sanctions and coordinated implementation with international networks including the U.S., EU, and Australia is urgent.
