North Korea Sends Top Envoy to Russia as It Girds for Friction With Seoul

  • Choe Son Hui is making her second visit to Russia this year
  • Ukraine sees North Korean weapons as one of its major worries
Choe Son HuiPhotographer: Maxim Shemetov/AFP/Getty Images
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North Korea sent its foreign minister to Russia for her second trip in less than a year to the major backer of Kim Jong Un’s regime. The move comes as Pyongyang readies for a parliamentary meeting that will likely approve measures that raise tensions with South Korea.

Choe Son Hui led a delegation taking part in women’s conferences, the official Korean Central News Agency reported Tuesday in a two-sentence dispatch. The foreign minister who rarely travels abroad last went to Moscow in January, where she held talks with President Vladimir Putin for a meeting the US and its partners saw as facilitating arms shipments from North Korea to aid the Kremlin’s assault on Ukraine.