Myanmar has decided to restore diplomatic ties with North Korea, more than 20 years after the DPRK staged a deadly bomb attack in Rangoon.
The diplomat said no official announcement had been made and an announcement might come only when the Myanmar junta names its ambassador to Pyongyang.
Analysts said the restoration of ties between two of the world’s most secretive regimes could have benefits for both. Burma is looking for arms suppliers to circumvent Western sanctions, while North Korea has eyed Burma’s offshore natural gas reserves.
“They want to get military equipment from North Korea because under western pressure they cannot get weapons from the West,” said Win Min, a Burmese military researcher based in Thailand.
“Now they can get (weapons) from China and they are trading with India. So the more places they can get weapons, the better for them,” he said.
The United States considers both Burma and North Korea as “outposts of tyranny”, which gives them some shared goals in working around US foreign policy, the analyst said.
“Pyongyang, which the military regime admires for its defiant attitude against the United States, can surely become a diplomatic asset,” he said.
Burma broke off diplomatic ties with North Korea in 1983 after it masterminded an attempt to assassinate South Korea’s then-president Chun Doo Hwan while he was on an official visit to Rangoon. North Korea staged a bomb attack on Chun’s delegation as they visited the Martyr’s Mausoleum, near the famous Shwedagon pagoda, on October 9, 1983. Chun survived the attack but the blast killed 17 of his entourage, including four cabinet ministers, while 17 others were injured. Four Burmese officials also died in the blast.
Two of the North Korean bombers were captured and one of them is still serving a life sentence in Burma’s notorious Insein prison.
