Proximity, perception, and the politics of association: ASEAN and North Korea

The charge is simplistic, but it persists in Western policy circles, feeding into a narrative that Southeast Asia is somehow an enabler of Pyongyang’s behaviour.

Yet the history of North Korea’s furtive operations in the region tells a more complex story—one that ASEAN has endured, not abetted.

Few regions outside the Korean Peninsula have witnessed the reach of North Korean covert action as vividly as Southeast Asia.

In October 1983, Rangoon (now Yangon) became the stage for a grisly political assassination attempt. North Korean agents planted a bomb at the Martyrs’ Mausoleum, timed to coincide with the visit of South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan.

The blast killed 21 people, including four South Korean cabinet ministers, but missed the president himself. Burma severed diplomatic ties with Pyongyang for more than two decades, underscoring the price of North Korea’s recklessness.

Fast forward to February 2017, and Kuala Lumpur International Airport became the theatre of another deadly operation. Kim Jong-nam, the estranged half-brother of Kim Jong-un, was assassinated with VX nerve agent, one of the world’s most lethal chemical weapons.

The brazen killing, executed in a public terminal with unsuspecting intermediaries, shocked Malaysia and the world. It demonstrated not only Pyongyang’s disregard for international norms but also its capacity to weaponize foreign soil for regime security.

These two episodes—spanning Myanmar and Malaysia—illustrate the continuity of North Korea’s shadow operations in Southeast Asia: furtive, deniable, and lethal. ASEAN states have responded by curbing or even severing ties when their sovereignty is violated, proving that they are targets, not partners, of North Korean covert action.

It is crucial to underline a basic principle of international law.

Unless a country is explicitly sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council, sovereign states remain free to maintain diplomatic engagement. ASEAN members, like all UN members, are bound by multilateral sanctions regimes—not by unilateral sanctions imposed by individual powers. North Korea, despite facing heavy UN sanctions on its nuclear and missile programs, is not under a blanket prohibition against diplomatic contact. Thus, when ASEAN states maintain embassies or host North Korean missions, they are not running afoul of international law.

Diplomatic engagement does not equal endorsement. Rather, it reflects ASEAN’s long-standing doctrine of omni-enmeshment—keeping even difficult actors within a framework of dialogue, however limited.

The alternative—total isolation—risks pushing those actors further into confrontation, leaving no channels for de-escalation.

The charge of “guilt by association” becomes even more ironic when one considers the double standards at play. While ASEAN is critiqued for maintaining diplomatic channels with Pyongyang, the United States today stands accused of complicity in one of the gravest humanitarian crises of our time: the starvation of Gazans in Palestine under Israel’s blockade and bombardment.

By providing political cover and material support to Israel, Washington is seen in much of the Global South as enabling collective punishment.

If ASEAN were to be judged guilty by association with North Korea simply by virtue of dialogue, what then should be said of the U.S. role in Gaza? The selective moralism of international politics is laid bare.

ASEAN’s engagement with North Korea has always been cautious and pragmatic. North Korea has attended the ASEAN Regional Forum, one of the few multilateral spaces where its diplomats regularly sit across from counterparts from the U.S., South Korea, and Japan.

For ASEAN, the rationale is simple: dialogue, however fraught, is preferable to silence.

At the same time, ASEAN states have shown no hesitation in condemning North Korea’s violations of sovereignty, as in the Rangoon bombing and the VX poisoning in Malaysia. They have tightened compliance with UN sanctions, even when costly. The association with Pyongyang, therefore, is not one of complicity but of necessity—managing a difficult neighbour within a broader architecture of regional stability.

ASEAN’s proximity to Russia and China may colour perceptions of its relationship with North Korea, but the reality is clear: Southeast Asia has been more victim than accomplice of Pyongyang’s covert operations.

The region’s diplomatic engagement does not breach international law unless proscribed by the UN Security Council.

If “guilt by association” is to be applied to ASEAN, then it must also be applied consistently to global powers whose own policies have enabled human suffering elsewhere, including in Gaza. Until then, ASEAN’s approach to North Korea must be seen for what it is: a cautious exercise in dialogue, not complicity.

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Phar Kim Beng, PhD, is Professor of ASEAN Studies and Director of the Institute of Internationaliation and ASEAN Studies (IINTAS) at the International Islamic University Malaysia.