Despite their geographical distance, Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific are increasingly interconnected by common security challenges and economic interdependence. North Korea’s actions, which have included military support for the Kremlin’s efforts in Ukraine while simultaneously escalating its confrontational stance toward South Korea in the Indo-Pacific, are a striking example. This marks a worrying trend of increased cooperation between the “axis of adversaries,” the world’s most aggressive authoritarian states, with far-reaching implications for global security. In a briefing paper, authors Pavel Havlíček, Ivana Karásková, and Danila Naumov address both the relationship between two distant, yet very similar, regions and the lessons for both regions from Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine.
