The Russian nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin wrote an essay last June calling for his countrymen to adopt North Korea’s ideology of juche. Often translated as self-reliance, juche is more accurately understood as “self-strengthening.” “We need the same ideology i.e., the Russian Juche, the reign of the Russian Subject,” Dugin wrote. “North Korea is a beautiful thing. Interestingly, the Korean word ‘Juche’ is a deeply philosophical term and means ‘subject’ or even the Heideggerian Dasein. It has everything else included in it: independence, freedom, civil sovereignty.”
Dugin’s proximity to Russian President Vladimir Putin is debatable. Still, this deep admiration for North Korea expressed by Moscow’s pre-eminent public intellectual speaks volumes about the direction of Russian politics. Some Western pundits and observers believe North Korea and Russia have entered into a short-term partnership of mutual convenience, most clearly evident in Kim Jong-un’s dispatching of North Korean troops to Ukraine. But Dugin’s comments suggest that Putin’s Russia and Kim’s North Korea have become more closely aligned, and that their partnership in the Ukraine war is the beginning of a much more durable relationship.
“Moscow and Pyongyang remain bound by significant ideological affinities.”
As Dugin explains, Moscow and Pyongyang remain bound by significant ideological affinities. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Marxism-Leninism has been replaced with “anti-Westernism” as the underlying ideological structure of this alliance. Both nations see themselves as embroiled in a spiritual conflict with the West, whose influence on the global stage threatens to degrade the social and moral foundations of their conservative societies. For this reason, they view the conflict in Ukraine as a “holy war.” Both regimes see the Western-led international order as inherently exploitative and oppressive. They cast themselves as protectors of traditional values from the West’s material decadence and moral depravity.
Both Putin and Kim are deeply suspicious of Western non-governmental organizations and institutions near or in their territories, which they view as vehicles for foreign subversion. North Korea’s government capitalized on paranoia surrounding the outbreak of Covid by imposing one of the harshest and longest border closures in the world, and went on to expel nearly all Western diplomats, humanitarian aid organizations, and tourists. In Russia, Putin recently expanded his list of “undesirable” entities to include all foreign state-funded organizations, banning Russian citizens from collaborating with any of them.
Both Moscow and Pyongyang see themselves as being on the frontlines of a new anti-imperialist struggle. In addition to viewing US foreign policy as inherently imperialist, both castigate the eastward expansion of NATO forces and United States-led multilateralism. In condemning Western governments as neo-colonialist, Moscow and Pyongyang claim to give voice to the perspective of the developing world. Given Russia’s violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, however, this anti-imperialist rhetoric increasingly rings hollow to many in the Global South.
Putin’s highly repressive form of autocracy is gradually coming to resemble North Korean totalitarianism. Kremlin censorship curtails the ability of Russian citizens to access outside news media; the long-term imprisonment and death of political opponents makes dissent nearly unthinkable. The personality cult around Putin is growing, although it hasn’t yet reached Pyongyang’s level of cultish leader-worship.
Russia is also descending into North Korean-style indoctrination. In 2022, a pro-Kremlin youth organization, Movement of the First, was established two months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Modeled on the Soviet-era Young Pioneers, the group promotes a staunchly nationalistic ideology and pledges to “reach the absolute majority of schoolchildren and college students and help millions of children find a purpose in life.” The same organization facilitated a summer 2024 cross-cultural exchange trip to North Korea for 250 Russian youth. A school in Khabarovsk, in Russia’s far east, recently began a juche study club that hosts student discussions of North Korean propaganda.
Pyongyang sending its troops to fight alongside Russian soldiers would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the North Korean government condemned the Kremlin as a bastion of traitors to the socialist cause. For Pyongyang, the end of Soviet communism meant the cutting off of subsidies and economic aid. At the same time, the end of Moscow’s nuclear umbrella propelled North Korean leaders to accelerate the country’s own nuclear weapons development. The North Korean people suffered a mass famine in the mid- to late-1990s as the regime devoted its meager financial resources to its nuclear program.
North Korea was forced to turn to China for greater economic assistance and security assurances development at a time when the Middle Kingdom’s economy, having embraced market reforms, was growing rapidly. Although Beijing became its chief economic patron, Pyongyang never felt a strong affinity toward the Chinese Communist Party, and longstanding territorial disputes around Mount Baekdu, an area of profound importance for Korean culture and North Korean mythology, have prevented North Korean leaders from fully trusting China. In recent internal remarks to party officials, Kim reportedly referred to China as a “longstanding enemy.” For its part, post-Maoist China was distrustful of the nuclear-armed rogue state on its border. As Chinese leadership sought greater international recognition as a responsible actor, North Korean hostility to reform and belligerence toward the United States and its allies was a drag on those aspirations. Kim’s rejuvenated relationship with Putin thus marks North Korea’s return to its preferred Russian political orbit.
The emerging international order has neither suited nor advanced the interests of Moscow or Pyongyang. The rise of China has sidelined Russia to junior-partner status, a demotion from its undisputed top position in the Cold War-era anti-Western bloc. Beneath the so-called “no limits partnership” between Moscow and Beijing lies substantial mistrust and jealousy. In the late 1960s, the two were engaged in a border war and threatened each other with nuclear annihilation.
Russia and North Korea seek to build a multipolar world that is not dominated by the West or China. The June 2024 summit between Putin and Kim and the resulting “comprehensive strategic partnership” agreement represented a pivotal moment: North Korea explicitly reoriented toward Moscow, departing from its post-Cold War economic dependence on China, while teaming up with the DPRK marked Russia’s decisive break from the Western “rules-based” international system. The reenergized friendship between Putin and Kim, therefore, is not a mere short-term strategic partnership, but rather the beginnings of a long-term alliance that will outlive the end of the war in Ukraine. The two nations are now destined for convergent geopolitical fates.