Home > National > North Korea

Kim Jong-un sends New Year's greeting to Putin, calls bilateral ties 'precious common asset'

Published: 27 Dec. 2025, 09:24 Updated: 28 Dec. 2025, 15:02

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, second from left, shake hands during their meeting at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a spaceport in the far eastern Amur region in Russia, on Sep. 13, 2023, their first reunion in over four years. [AP/YONHAP]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sent a message of greeting to Russian President Vladimir Putin ahead of New Year's Day, calling the two countries' relations a "precious common asset," the North's state media said Saturday.

In the message. Kim described this year as a "meaningful" one when the two countries "steadily wrote a great biography of the alliance" through "full mutual support and selfless encouragement," according to the Korean Central News Agency.

Kim's greeting came after Putin himself sent a New Year's message to the North Korean leader on Dec. 18.

"I think that today's DPRK-Russia alliance ... is a precious common asset to be carried forward forever not only in the present era but also by posterity generation after generation," Kim said, using the initialism of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Kim said North-Russia relations have been further consolidated into the "sincerest alliance of sharing blood, life and death in the same trench," as he referred to the North's troop deployment to Russia to support the war with Ukraine.

"Now no one can break the relations between the peoples of the two countries and their unity, supported firmly by embodiment of the strong will and strength to defend the just aspirations of the times and set right history," he said.

North Korea and Russia have been deepening their military cooperation since Putin and Kim signed a "comprehensive strategic partnership" treaty during their summit in Pyongyang in June 2024. Since last year, the North has sent around 15,000 combat troops to support Moscow's war against Ukraine.

Yonhap