Narrative-shaping as a tool of geopolitics is at the core of the latest development in the North Korea-Russia strategic partnership, with the governments of both countries poised to collaborate on controlling the narrative about their relationship both at home and abroad.

On March 28, Russian state-run news agency TASS inked an agreement with North Korean government news outlet the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) aimed at coordinating information exchanges as well as cooperating to combat what the two sides considered “fake news.”

Given the dependence of both Russian President Vladimir Putin and DPRK Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un on preserving their public legitimacy through narrative control, both countries’ governments will increasingly rely on positive public views of their respective states, neither of which has particularly positive views of the other. The driving force behind this new endeavor is turning inter-governmental ties into similarly warm relations between their publics.

Deepening collaboration between these two major state news organs is a natural development after a recent ministerial-level framework for media cooperation as part of the broader North Korea-Russia comprehensive partnership treaty.   

For the DPRK, leveraging media to mitigate persistent mistrust among its own people rooted in negative memories of Russia’s abandonment of the DPRK in the 1990s is of conceivable interest to a North Korean government deeply wary of anything that could harm its public legitimacy. Authorities in Pyongyang will need to justify its turn toward Russia to........

© The Moscow Times