North Korea sends delegation to Iran first time in 5 years, stokes arms trade concerns

\North Korea has sent a delegation to Iran, the first such visit in five years, stoking US fears that Pyongyang is selling weapons to Tehran and essentially helping the West Asia conflict to fuel.

Giving almost no details of the trip, North Korea’s KCNA said in a one-line dispatch that the country sent a delegation headed by External Economic Relations Minister Yun Jong Ho to Tehran on Tuesday.

Earlier, Yun paid a visit to Russia and since then the minister has emerged as a key player in trade between Pyongyang and Moscow.

What will happen during the visit?

North Korea rarely reveals the agenda of such state visits. But just the fact that a high-ranking official is going to Iran highlights the increasing level of military cooperation between the two countries.

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The last time North Korea sent someone to Iran was in 2019.

A research professor at Korea University, Ban Kil Joo, said, “The Ukraine war has paved the way for cooperation between North Korea and Iran.”

“North Korea is sending an economic delegation now but it will be the beginning of a wider military cooperation to follow between the two,” the professor added.

Is N.Korea selling weapons to Iran?

The US has always feared that Iran and North Korea are engaged in military cooperation in the nuclear and missile fields.

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Although the partnership has been witnessing a dip in recent years owing to sanctions, recent tensions between Israel and Iran have once again set off alarm about the resumption of arms sales between the two nations.

In fact, South Korea has put its spy agency to work to determine whether Iran employed Pyongyang’s missile technology to carry out its attack on Israel.

Most experts have cited relations shared by Tehran and Pyongyang to be the reason behind their anticipation of such a possibility.

The two countries established diplomatic ties in 1973 and since then countries around the world have been suspicious of large-scale arms trade between them despite their weapons programmes being under international sanctions.

Almost two decades ago, the then Iran’s Revolutionary Guards publicly acknowledged that Tehran had received Scud-B and Scud-C missiles from North Korea.