PROFILE: Kim Jong Un, the man who plays Beijing and Moscow like two trump cards

Introduction: A dangerous balancing act at the top of the authoritarian world

When Xi Jinping makes the trip to Pyongyang

On June 8, 2026, Xi Jinping set foot in Pyongyang for the first state visit by a Chinese leader to North Korea in fourteen years. The staging was elaborate: parades, ceremonies, declarations of eternal friendship. But behind the carefully orchestrated protocol, a strategic reality far less flattering to Beijing imposed itself on anyone paying close attention. Xi had not come from a position of strength. He had come to recover influence he had lost — influence ceded to a Putin whom Pyongyang now considers at least as useful, if not more so, than Chinese economic power.

The Korea Economic Institute of America published an analysis on June 25, 2026 that dissects this dynamic with clinical precision. Its title is not rhetorical: Beijing Courts a More Confident North Korea. What was once a tutor-to-student relationship has become something radically different — and that shift carries direct implications for global security, for an Ukraine fighting Russian forces backed by North Korean soldiers, and for a Western world that systematically underestimates the strategic sophistication of Kim Jong Un.

The man who evolved: from apprentice to tightrope walker

The first five summits: Kim sought counsel

According to the Korea Economic Institute analysis, the first five Kim-Xi summits in 2018 and 2019 had a clear dynamic: Kim was seeking advice on how to manage the United States and what he should say to Trump. The two leaders' first in-person meeting did not take place until March 2018 in Beijing — more than five years after both men had become heads of state. Kim traveled to Beijing again in January 2019, one month before the Hanoi summit with Trump, for a last-minute consultation with Xi. That was the posture of a junior partner seeking validation from a senior one.

That Kim no longer exists. The war in Ukraine changed everything. Since February 24, 2022, Russia has become massively dependent on North Korean military assistance — ammunition, missiles, and eventually soldiers deployed on Ukrainian soil. That dependence overturned the balance of power to a degree few analysts had anticipated. Kim is no longer the country that needs propping up; he has become a strategic partner Moscow can no longer afford to disappoint. And this transformation unfolded before the eyes of an Xi Jinping who watched his influence over Pyongyang quietly shrink.

September 2025 and June 2026: two meetings, a shift in tone

The Korea Economic Institute notes that the two most recent Kim-Xi encounters — in September 2025 in Beijing for the eightieth anniversary of the end of World War II, and in June 2026 in Pyongyang — carried a flavor radically different from the previous ones. Kim appeared markedly more self-assured, and Xi visibly more preoccupied by the direction Kim is taking in his international actions. At the Beijing festivities in September 2025, Chinese protocol placed Putin in the front row and Kim in the second — a signal of the hierarchy Beijing intended to maintain. Kim responded a few days later by sending a congratulatory message to Putin for Russia's national holiday on June 12, pledging Moscow his unwavering support and describing Russo-North Korean ties as "trustworthy comrade alliance relations."

That message was published on the front page of the Party's official newspaper in North Korea. It was not a discreet communication — it was a public declaration addressed as much to Xi as to Putin: Xi's visit had done nothing to diminish Kim's commitment to his Russian partnership. Kim sends simultaneous signals to both capitals, deliberately sustaining a strategic ambiguity that maximizes his room to maneuver.

What Moscow offered: the price of the North Korean alliance

Documented weapons systems and sensitive technology transfers

The American Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, published in its "2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment," documents with precision the concessions Russia granted North Korea in exchange for soldiers and military equipment. Moscow provided Pyongyang with SA-22 surface-to-air systems and electronic warfare equipment — and, in a more troubling disclosure, expanded the sharing of technologies applicable to the space, nuclear, and ballistic missile domains. According to the same report, Russia extended an offer of assistance to North Korea for its space program, including launch vehicles, satellites, and specialized training.

These transfers are not incidental. They represent a deliberate acceleration of the North Korean military program in exchange for a direct contribution to the war against Ukraine. The North Korean soldiers deployed in Russia — whose numbers, according to multiple American and South Korean intelligence assessments, potentially reach several tens of thousands — are not merely additional manpower for Moscow; they are acquiring real combat experience that Pyongyang will use to sharpen its own military capabilities.

The documented improvement in North Korean missile accuracy

The ISW analysis from June 30, 2026 brings a particularly alarming element to light: Ukrainian intelligence officials told the Kyodo News agency on June 20 that Russian technological improvements have significantly enhanced the precision of North Korean ballistic missiles, specifically the KN-23 and KN-24. The margin of error has dropped from one to three kilometers down to one to five meters — an improvement by a factor of 200 to 600. Before these enhancements, only 20 percent of North Korean missiles reached their targets. The corrections likely stem from improvements to the inertial navigation system and the integration of real combat data gathered in Ukraine.

North Korea is thus drawing a double benefit from the war in Ukraine: Russian financial and technological resources on one side, real combat data to refine its weapons on the other. Ukraine pays the price of this North Korean technological acceleration every time a KN-23 strikes with improved precision.

Geography as destiny: why China cannot abandon Pyongyang

840 miles versus 10: the asymmetry of borders

To understand why Xi Jinping cannot simply let Kim Jong Un draw closer to Moscow without reacting, one must look at the geography. According to the Korea Economic Institute analysis, China and North Korea share an 840-mile border (roughly 1,350 km). The Russia-North Korea border, by contrast, extends no more than 10 miles (16 km). North Korea is economically and geographically embedded in northeastern China to a degree Moscow can never match.

The Chinese city of Dandong, with its two million inhabitants, faces the North Korean city of Sinuiju across the Yalu River — a recently completed bridge facilitates trade between the two. Roughly 40 percent of North Korean exports pass through or toward the port of Dandong. The nearest Russian city to the North Korean border is Vladivostok — 300,000 inhabitants, 90 miles from the border. This structural reality constrains Beijing: a stable North Korea serves as a buffer zone on its border, supports the struggling economy of northeastern China, and preserves Beijing's influence over any future settlement of the Korean question. Beijing cannot afford to lose Pyongyang, even as Pyongyang drifts away.

The return of the direct Beijing-Pyongyang train

The ISW analysis from June 30, 2026 notes that direct trains between North Korea and China only resumed in spring 2026, following the COVID-19 closures. North Korea also agreed to re-admit Chinese children — a measured signal of openness to tourist and cultural exchanges. Pyongyang plays these reopenings as bargaining chips in its negotiations with Beijing, granting gestures of normalization at the precise moment Xi needs them politically to present his visit as a success. But these gestures remain deliberately limited: North Korea is reluctant to become excessively dependent on the Chinese economy again, having learned from the vulnerability that dependence once created.

Kim Jong Un manages his two allies like an investor who refuses to concentrate all his assets in a single fund. Beijing provides the structural economic support and diplomatic shield at the UN Security Council. Moscow provides cutting-edge military technologies, combat experience, and the ideological validation of a recognized nuclear power. These two functions are complementary and Kim intends to keep both active.

Xi visits the Korean War memorial: a symbolically loaded message

The June 9, 2026 visit and the "eternal historical memory"

The final act of Xi Jinping's state visit to Pyongyang, on June 9, 2026, was a visit to the Korean War memorial dedicated to the soldiers of the Chinese People's Volunteers — those who fought alongside North Korea against UN forces during the Korean War (1950–1953). Xi pledged to carry forward the "revolutionary spirit" of that war. North Korean state media reported that the two leaders had evoked their "shared battles" and paid tribute to this common memory.

This closing choice was not without purpose. By visiting that memorial, Xi reminded Kim — and the world — that the Sino-North Korean relationship is grounded in shared blood sacrifice, a historical debt Moscow cannot invoke with the same depth. It was an attempt to reposition Beijing as the natural, organic, irreplaceable partner of Pyongyang — against a Putin whose friendship is more recent and more overtly transactional.

Neither Beijing nor Pyongyang mentioned access to the Sea of Japan

The South China Morning Post analysis from June 12, 2026 notes a remarkable silence at the Xi-Kim summit: neither side publicly mentioned the question of China's access to the Sea of Japan via North Korean territory or ports — a long-standing strategic aspiration for Beijing that would allow it to bypass the Tsushima Strait controlled by Japan. That silence is itself significant. China did not want to appear to be asking Pyongyang for a favor. Pyongyang did not want to appear to have conceded anything of substance.

Both sides played the scene of visible reconciliation while preserving their actual room for maneuver. Kim granted Xi the state visit and the protocol. Xi granted Kim the symbolic legitimacy of a top-level presence. But neither conceded what the other truly wanted.

Russia as Kim's existential validator

The June 2024 comprehensive strategic partnership treaty

The North Korean strategic pivot toward Moscow has a precise date: June 2024, when Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin signed a "comprehensive strategic partnership" treaty during Putin's visit to Pyongyang — the first by a Russian head of state to North Korea in twenty-four years. That treaty formalized what had previously been a de facto cooperation arrangement: Pyongyang supplies Moscow with ammunition, missiles, and soldiers; Moscow supplies Pyongyang with military technologies and diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council.

The Russian diplomatic cover may be the least spectacular but most durable benefit. Russia vetoed new UN sanctions against North Korea in 2022 and voted to terminate the UN expert panel that monitored compliance with North Korean sanctions in 2024. It also called on countries to lift their unilateral sanctions against Pyongyang. In essence, Moscow dismantled part of the international pressure system that had contained — imperfectly but genuinely — the expansion of North Korea's military program.

Kim as "comrade," not Kim as dependent

The congratulatory message Kim sent to Putin on June 12, 2026 for Russia's national holiday was published on the front page of the North Korean official newspaper. Kim spoke of "trustworthy comrade alliance relations" and a friendship that "opens a new chapter in history." A few days later, Kim sent Xi Jinping a message for his seventy-third birthday, wishing him "good health and greater success." The register is different: to Putin, Kim speaks of military alliance. To Xi, he speaks of health and socialist construction. The gradation is telling.

These two messages, sent just days apart, map out Kim's strategy precisely: keeping both capitals in a state of mild insecurity about their respective positions, so that neither Beijing nor Moscow takes his loyalty for granted. It is an alliance management approach of calculated coldness that has few equivalents in contemporary world politics.

Implications for European and Ukrainian security

The direct link between Pyongyang and Kyiv

Kim Jong Un's balancing strategy is not merely an abstract power game between Asian great powers. It has concrete and documented consequences on the European battlefield. The American Defense Intelligence Agency confirmed that North Korea is supplying missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine. Those missiles — whose accuracy has been improved using Ukrainian combat data — strike Ukrainian cities, civilian infrastructure, military positions. The Kim-Putin partnership translates directly into Ukrainian deaths.

Beyond that, the North Korean soldiers deployed alongside Russian forces in Ukraine are not merely additional manpower. They will return home with combat experience against an army trained to NATO standards, with direct knowledge of the tactics, weapons, and vulnerabilities of democratic forces. Ukraine is involuntarily training the future North Korean army — a tragic paradox that Western governments have not yet fully integrated into their policies.

What the West must refuse to ignore

The Korea Economic Institute analysis underlines an uncomfortable reality: North Korea is economically and deeply tied to China, on which it depends for the bulk of its official trade. But that economic dependence no longer translates into political leverage for Beijing. Kim has learned to manage his economic dependence on China without allowing it to become a strategic one. He uses Chinese economic resources to stabilize his economy and Russian military-technological resources to reinforce his security apparatus.

The West long bet on China to moderate North Korea — that bet has failed. Xi Jinping has neither the will nor the ability to constrain Kim on the nuclear file, because Beijing needs North Korea as a buffer zone and as a useful disruptor against the United States. The June 2026 state visit does not alter that fundamental equation — it confirms it.

Conclusion: Kim at the summit of a dangerous and unstable equilibrium

A leader who converted weakness into strength

The portrait drawn by the analyses of the Korea Economic Institute, ISW, and the American Defense Intelligence Agency is that of a leader who has accomplished something exceedingly rare in international politics: transforming a poor, isolated, maximally sanctioned country into a strategically indispensable actor for two nuclear great powers. Kim Jong Un achieved this by exploiting Russia's growing dependence on his military resources, by managing his economic dependence on China without allowing it to become political servitude, and by developing a nuclear and ballistic arsenal credible enough that neither Washington, nor Seoul, nor Beijing can ignore him.

Xi Jinping's visit to Pyongyang in June 2026 should not be read as a sign of a North Korea that has returned to the Chinese fold. It should be read as proof that Beijing is sufficiently alarmed by Pyongyang's growing autonomy to send its supreme leader on a visit — the first in fourteen years — in an attempt to stabilize a relationship that is partly slipping away from it. That is the measure of the change. It was not Xi who summoned Kim. It was Xi who made the trip.

An equilibrium that cannot last indefinitely

The balance Kim maintains between Beijing and Moscow is brilliant but fragile. It depends on the continuation of the war in Ukraine — which justifies Russia's dependence on Pyongyang. It depends on China's willingness to continue tolerating Kim's growing autonomy rather than constraining it. It also depends on Kim's ability to maintain his nuclear credibility without crossing a threshold that would force a direct American response. Each of these conditions can change. But for now, in June 2026, the man from Pyongyang is playing his two trump cards with a dexterity that the democratic world has not yet found a way to counter.

Conclusion: Portrait of a strategist the West underestimates at its own risk

What the June 2026 record documents

At the end of this profile, built on analyses from the Korea Economic Institute, ISW, the American DIA, and data from the South China Morning Post, a coherent picture emerges. Kim Jong Un is not the unpredictable and irrational leader that Western rhetoric long portrayed. He is methodical. He has a long-term vision for the security of his regime and his country. He has maneuvered Beijing and Moscow with a dexterity that few leaders of middle powers have demonstrated. And he has obtained, in exchange for soldiers and ammunition for a war that did not directly concern him, technological transfers that are accelerating his nuclear and ballistic program at a pace that sanctions had failed to stop.

This outcome is not a victory for peace. It is a defeat for the international order grounded in non-proliferation. Every North Korean missile that strikes Ukraine with improved precision is a reminder that threats to global security are interconnected, and that a coherent strategy against the China-Russia-North Korea axis requires an overarching vision that democracies have not yet built.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Editorial positioning

This profile is based exclusively on documented primary and secondary sources, cited at the end of the article. No facts were invented. No fictional testimony was attributed. The analyses and value judgments are clearly identified as editorial in the italicized passages preceded by the "mini editorial" designation.

Acknowledged limitations

Access to North Korea's internal intelligence data is by nature very limited. Kim Jong Un's exact intentions can only be inferred from his documented actions. Technology transfers between Russia and North Korea are in part assessed on the basis of Western intelligence sources that may have blind spots. This profile presents an interpretation of the available facts, not an absolute certainty about the intentions of the North Korean regime.

Sources

Primary sources

Korea Economic Institute of America — China Courts a More Confident North Korea, by Sang Kim — June 25, 2026

Institute for the Study of War (ISW) — Korean Peninsula Update, June 30, 2026, by Adam Grace — July 1, 2026

Morung Express / IANS — North Korea in 'strongest strategic position' in decades: US intel report (DIA 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment) — May 24, 2025

Secondary sources

South China Morning Post — North Korea topic page, coverage June 2026 (Was Kim Jong-un the real winner from Xi Jinping's visit? ; Kim turns out to be the cleverest of them all) — June 2026

Hutchin Song — Fault Lines Daily Summary June 26, 2026 — June 26, 2026

The Asia Cable — Asia Daily June 25, 2026 — June 25, 2026