‘North Korea is not Iran’: Former Pyongyang envoy explains why Kim Jong Un isn’t losing sleep

The U.S.-Israel war with Iran shows no sign of a quick resolution. Washington’s bet that killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would halt Tehran’s nuclear program and trigger regime change has collided with the realities of Middle East power politics, global economic fears, and Iran’s stubborn resistance. The conflict is becoming a protracted one.

Early speculation that Kim Jong Un could be Washington’s next target has given way to a more considered view: North Korea is not Iran.

To understand how Kim is reading the situation, Daily NK sat down with Ryu Hyun-woo at an undisclosed location in Seoul. Ryu spent more than two decades in North Korea’s foreign ministry handling Middle East affairs, graduating from the Arabic department of Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies before being posted to Syria in 2010 and appointed counselor at the North Korean Embassy in Kuwait in 2016. He became acting ambassador in September 2017 after Kuwait expelled the North Korean envoy over Pyongyang’s weapons programs, and defected to South Korea two years later. He is the son-in-law of Jeon Il-chun, former director of Office No. 39, which manages the Kim family’s financial reserves, and recently published “Kim Jong Un’s Hidden Secret Vault.”

Ryu’s read on Kim’s reaction is straightforward: fear, followed by relief.

“When Kim Jong Un heard that Khamenei had been killed, he would have felt fear without exception,” he said. Kim knows U.S. assets track his every move and that President Donald Trump could order a strike if he chose to. But Ryu argues Kim also knows why that won’t happen — neither Washington nor Beijing wants to shatter the security balance of Northeast Asia.

“Even while feeling that fear, he would also breathe a quiet sigh of relief that what happened to Iran won’t happen to him.”

The following is an edited transcript of the interview.

‘North Korea collapsing would be chaos for the entire region’

Is a U.S. operation to eliminate Kim Jong Un conceivable?

“The U.S. could remove Kim Jong Un, but the likelihood of actually carrying out such an operation is close to zero. The biggest reason is that there is no alternative force or figure inside North Korea capable of taking over after Kim is gone. In Iran’s case, there is at least a possibility of power transferring to a pro-American leadership. North Korea is different. It has maintained a dictatorship with no second-in-command and no political rival for decades. There is no opposition party. It is a society that rooted out dissent entirely to sustain the sole leadership system established under Kim Il Sung. If Kim Jong Un were removed, the center of leadership would simply vanish. North Korean society would almost immediately descend into chaos. You would see internal power struggles over who controls the state, and out of that instability millions of North Korean refugees would be generated. That is not just a problem inside North Korea. It fractures the security landscape of Northeast Asia as a whole, and China has no desire to see North Korea collapse.”

So the situation is fundamentally different from Iran?

“Exactly. In the Middle East, the U.S. has allies who can help manage the fallout from striking Iran: Israel, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE. Countries that can help Washington maintain a favorable regional order after the strikes. Northeast Asia is different. The U.S., China, Russia, South Korea, and Japan are all part of a balanced regional structure, and none of them wants to fracture that balance. On top of that, North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty with China in 1961 and concluded a comprehensive strategic partnership treaty with Russia in 2024. Both treaties contain provisions for automatic intervention by Russia and China in the event of a conflict on the Korean Peninsula. Iran has no equivalent agreements. That is why Kim Jong Un, even while feeling fear at the news of Khamenei’s killing, would also be exhaling with relief that he won’t end up in the same position.”

How are North Korea’s cadres processing the Iran war? Do they see it as a threat to their own system?

“They are being reminded of just how formidable U.S. military power is. But the internal reference materials circulated among cadres almost certainly do not contain the detail that Khamenei was killed in a precision U.S. strike. What they would have received is something more like: ‘The spiritual leader of the Iranian revolution died as a result of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes.’ There is no footage, no commentary, no context. Even senior officials would have difficulty grasping the full picture, and it is a further step from there to thinking, ‘This could happen to us.’ Most cadres will treat the Iran war as someone else’s problem.”

Could the Iran war push North Korea and Iran closer together?

“Right now there is essentially no shared interest driving deeper North Korea-Iran cooperation. In the past, North Korea transferred missile technology to Iran. Today, Iran is ahead of North Korea in both drone and ballistic missile technology. North Korea has nothing to sell. North Korean nationals in Iran amount to embassy staff, a handful of traders, and a small number of Reconnaissance General Bureau personnel. Iran has a population of 90 million. It does not need North Korean labor. And Iran is a hard-nosed negotiator. The Persians are merchants by heritage. They calculate every transaction and will not accept a losing deal. North Korea knows this. What North Korea pursues across the Middle East is diplomatic support at international forums like the United Nations, a vote in its corner. The prospect of substantive economic or military cooperation is effectively zero.”

(To be continued in Part 2)

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