• North Korea has called South Korea a 'fascistic dictatorship' after its short-lived martial law.
• South Korea has democratic elections, while Kim Jong Un exerts near-total control over North Korea.
• An article in North Korean state media also referred to South Korea's president as a "puppet."

North Korea has called South Korea a dictatorship after the latter's short-lived attempt at martial law.

Last week, South Korea's president, Yoon Suk-yeol, declared martial law in the country in a surprise announcement, citing the need to eliminate "anti-state" forces.

The unexpected decision was met with widespread protests, and hours later South Korea's parliament voted down the measure. Yoon's government quickly rescinded it.

In an article published by North Korea's state-run KCNA news agency on Wednesday, the situation in South Korea was characterized as "pandemonium."

It referred to Yoon as a "puppet" who proclaimed martial law "in a bid to escape from the worst ruling crisis."

Kim Jong Un exerts near-total control over North Korea's population, using extensive surveillance, state-run media, suppressing dissent, and offering no real choice in elections.

The article also criticized South Korea as a "fascist dictatorship," which it said was under the watch of the international community.

In reality, North Korea is widely regarded as a global pariah due to Kim's authoritarian governance, whereas South Korea is recognized as a democratic nation.

According to Freedom House's Freedom in the World rankings, South Korea scores 83 out of 100. In contrast, North Korea scores just 3 out of 100 and is designated "not free."

Martial law is no longer in place in South Korea, and Yoon is now under investigation for treason, with a travel ban preventing him from leaving the country.

But over the weekend an attempt to impeach Yoon narrowly failed after many lawmakers from his ruling People Power Party boycotted the vote. The main opposition party is expected to continue its impeachment efforts.

During the political chaos that rocked South Korea last week, there were concerns that North Korea might exploit the turmoil, using a moment of weakness to its advantage.

Business Insider reported that this could take the form of propaganda designed to erode trust in democracy in South Korea.

• Trump has boasted about his chemistry with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
• The President-elect likely believes he can cajole and pressurize the dictator again.
• But this time North Korea's more powerful, and Kim has options.

Donald Trump has long reminisced about the unlikely bromance he formed with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while president.

On the campaign trail, he claimed the North Korean leader missed him and said that relations would improve once he returned to power.

Kim hasn't been so enthusiastic. At a defense expo in Pyongyang this week, he accused the US of an "unchanging aggressive and hostile policy" toward North Korea that has placed the world in the "most chaotic and violent" state since World War II.

His comments suggest that Trump will find Kim a much tougher and more emboldened character to deal with this time around.

The stakes couldn't be higher, with North Korea providing Russia with vital support for its war in Ukraine, and menacing its neighbors with rhetoric and weapons tests.

"Trump comes into his second term with a weaker hand than he had in 2017," Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst with the Eurasia Group, focused on China and northeastern Asia, told Business Insider.

A relationship gone sour 

Trump is seeking to gear up his relationship with Kim again, with Reuters reporting Wednesday that he will likely seek new direct talks when he takes office.

However, Kim has long harbored a grudge against the President-elect, according to Bruce Bennet, an analyst with the RAND Corporation.

The grudge goes back to the 2019 Hanoi conference with Trump, where the pair engaged in one of the first face-to-face meetings between a North Korean leader and US president in history. There, Kim overplayed his hand, and Trump walked out.

"Kim was furious and many of his people who had helped arrange the meeting paid severe prices," said Bennet.

"I think it is unlikely that Kim Jong-un will meet with Trump, even if Trump pursues that possibility unless Trump is prepared to offer some serious concessions before the meeting."

Kim breaks North Korea's isolation

As Trump returns to power, the world is a more complex and dangerous place, and Kim has profited.

Back in 2017, when Trump took office, North Korea faced almost total international isolation as the UN imposed sweeping sanctions to pressure the state to dismantle its nuclear program. 

Sanctions were a powerful tool as Trump sought to place further "maximum pressure" on Kim. 

That's no longer the case. Kim has leveraged the Russian invasion of Ukraine to break North Korea's isolation, brokering a deal with Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

In exchange for thousands of North Korean troops and millions of artillery rounds for his Ukraine invasion, Putin has provided North Korea with food, oil, and technology.

Meanwhile, Russia has used its permanent place on the UN Security Council to stymie the sanctions enforcement program.

Since Russia's 2022 Ukraine invasion, Kim has also been taking bigger risks, said Chan, aggressively confronting longtime foe South Korea and menacing the US and its allies with long-range missile tests.

Trump has pledged to end the Ukraine war, possibly by handing Ukrainian territory to Russia.

Critics say a lenient position on Russian aggression further emboldens North Korea.

"It will be interesting to see how the new administration reconciles a more lenient position on Russian aggression —now enabled by North Korean troops and material — with continued efforts toward the rollback of the North Korean nuclear program," said Daniel Salisbury, a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Science & Security Studies at King's College London.

Trump's gambit 

The President-elect does have some advantages in dealing with North Korea's leader — not least his oft boasted of "chemistry."

"Trump is more likely to use carrots than sticks to achieve his strategic goals on the Korean Peninsula. This means resuming direct leader-to-leader diplomacy with Kim, with whom he has always enjoyed a strong rapport," said Chan. 

Trump's pledge to end the Ukraine war could work to his advantage, reducing Russian dependence on North Korea and leading the state to find itself once again isolated. 

A deal between Trump and Kim appears to be a long shot, but it's just about possible, said Chan.

Trump could stop short of demanding the denuclearization of North and instead broker a "freeze" on nuclear development and weapons tests. 

In return, Trump could offer Kim sanctions relief and a reduction of US troops in South Korea.

"Kim likely sees in Trump a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remake his country's relationship with the US, and thereby the wider world," said Chan.

"The potential to achieve his strategic goal of winning recognition as a nuclear state while coming in from the international cold will likely be too great for Kim to pass up, particularly as the Ukraine war winds down."

The nuclear option

Others remain skeptical of Kim's willingness to do business with Trump after the 2019 humiliation.

Trump may have to abandon the flattery and return to the threats and pressure.

For Bennet, the realistic options available to Trump could come down to military pressure and information warfare. 

One option is to modernize the nuclear weapons facilities in South Korea the US abandoned in 1991. Another is to launch an information warfare campaign inside North Korea.

Ultimately, events in Ukraine will determine whether Kim wants a new rapprochement.

Neither maximum pressure nor flattery "may not work until the Ukraine war comes to an end," Ellen Kim, a senior fellow with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told BI.

"We have to see how North Korea's relationship with Russia evolves."

• The comments were made by Kurt Campbell, the US deputy secretary of state.
• China may fear the alliance could bring US allies in East Asia closer together.
• North Korea is providing crucial support to Russia in Ukraine, and is getting favors in return.

China is increasingly concerned about the alliance between Kim Jong Un's North Korea and Vladimir Putin's Russia, according to Kurt Campbell, the US deputy secretary of state.

The US believes that more than 11,000 North Korean troops have deployed to Kursk in Russia, where Putin is attempting to take back territory that Ukrainian forces captured.

Meanwhile, Russia is providing North Korea with economic and diplomatic support.

"The topic that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for Chinese interlocutors is the DPRK [North Korea] engagement with Russia," Campbell said at a talk for the Center for Strategic and International Studies last week, according to The Guardian.

"In some of the discussions we have had, it seems we are informing them of things that they were unaware of with regard to DPRK pursuits, and they are concerned that Russian encouragement might lead the DPRK to contemplate either actions or military actions that might not be in China's interests."

He added that China has not directly criticized Russia, "but we do believe that the increasing coordination between Pyongyang and Moscow is unnerving them," he said.

Russia and North Korea are among China's closest international allies, but analysts say Beijing is wary of the potential impact of an alliance between the authoritarian powers.

The support Russia is giving North Korea could upset the delicate balance of power on the Korean peninsula, where North and South Korea have for decades been locked in a frozen conflict.

South Korea has already threatened to hand weapons to Ukraine in response to North Korea's support for Russia, and the tensions could spill into East Asia.

The Russia-North Korea alliance could weaken China's influence in East Asia, and draw US allies in the region closer together.

Some observers also believe that President-elect Donald Trump could seek to drive a wedge between China and Russia, the US' two most powerful rivals, when he takes office in January.

"China likely regards deepening ties between Russia and North Korea with some wariness," Ali Wyne, an analyst with the Crisis Group, told Business Insider in June.

"It worries about the possibility of Russia's providing military assistance that could advance North Korea's nuclear and missile programs."

However, China has considerable leverage over both Russia and North Korea. It provided the Kremlin with crucial economic and diplomatic support in the Ukraine war and has maintained close economic and political ties with North Korea for decades.

If it chose, it could likely use that leverage to restrain the North Korea-Russia alliance, say experts.

Others believe that the alliance benefits China. "Officially, they might not really welcome it; they might see it as an alarming situation," Jagannath Panda, head of the Stockholm Center for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs, previously told BI.

"But the Chinese are waiting for an opportunity where North Korea, Russia, and China can come stronger together, and I think North Korea sending the troops to Russia is a testimony to that."

Panda said that China's strategic goal is to build an authoritarian nexus that would undermine the current world order. The growing alliance between North Korea and Russia, he said, is a step toward that.

• Russia announced on Wednesday that Vladimir Putin is gifting Kim Jong Un about 70 animals for his zoo.
• Russia's environmental ministry said the animals include a lioness, two bears, two yaks, and over 60 birds.
• The new set of animals is another touch by Putin to firm up his alliance with North Korea.

Moscow has sent Pyongyang yet another tranche of animals as gifts, as Russian leader Vladimir Putin seeks to bolster his alliance with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

This time, the animal contingent numbered around 70, according to a statement posted on Wednesday by the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment.

Describing the animals as a gesture of friendship from Putin to North Korea, the statement listed a female African lion, two bears, two yaks, five white cockatoos, 25 different species of pheasant, and 40 mandarin ducks among the transfers.

They are being delivered from the Moscow Zoo to the Pyongyang Central Zoo, the statement added.

"I am sure that the animals and birds will be well looked after. They will not get sick and will quickly get used to their new home," said Alexander Kozlov, the minister of natural resources and the environment, in the statement.

Kozlov's ministry said it had previously sent Pyongyang birds such as eagles, cranes, and parrots, but that it was the first time Russia had donated mammals.

Putin has recently been using animal diplomacy to cozy up to Kim. In August, the Times of London, citing a veterinary source in Russia, reported that the Russian leader had sent Pyongyang two dozen purebred white horses.

Kim had earlier gifted Putin two Pungsan hunting dogs during the latter's one-day visit to Pyongyang in June. State media painted the trip as a rosy meet between friends, publishing dozens of photos of the two leaders taking a joy ride in a car, playing with dogs, and strolling through presidential gardens.

They've wrought a public image of their close relationship amid a US-led global push to isolate Russia and North Korea. The West says both nations have breached international law, through Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Pyongyang's repeated ballistic missile tests.

Putin and Kim have since resorted to turning to each other for help, officiating a mutual defense agreement in June.

Moscow hopes to lean on North Korea as an additional, vital source of manpower, ammunition, and older artillery systems for its war on Ukraine, while Pyongyang has been receiving food, money, and assistance for its nuclear weapons programs.

The budding partnership between both nations represents yet another pathway for Russia to stall the significant collapse that Western sanctions could induce. The Kremlin has been waging a war of attrition in Ukraine, throwing men and military hardware at the front line in hopes of outlasting Kyiv's Western-reliant resources.

As the likelihood of a drawn-out conflict grows, European NATO members such as Germany and Poland have been bolstering their defense spending. In 2023, military spending in Western and Central reached $588 billion, or an increase of about 62% since 2014, per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.