AUKUS and North Korea in the Indo-Pacific: 5 Years On |
Flashpoints | Security | East Asia
AUKUS and North Korea in the Indo-Pacific: 5 Years On
Pyongyang portrays AUKUS as a dangerous threat, but has it really influenced North Korea’s evolving grand strategy?
In this photo from North Korean state media outlet KCNA, Kim Jong Un personally inspects a project to build a nuclear submarine, Dec. 25, 2025.
North Korea’s strategic posture has visibly shifted since the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) agreement was signed in 2021. Pyongyang has “irreversibly” enshrined nuclear weapons into its constitution, formalized a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” with Russia that contains a mutual defense clause, sent 14,000 troops to the battlefield in Ukraine, abandoned reunification with South Korea, and vowed to modernize its outdated navy.
North Korea constantly reminds its citizens about the perceived threat that AUKUS poses. The official state-run media mouthpiece, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), recently described AUKUS as “gravely threatening regional peace and security” after Australia transferred the first $500 million payment to the United States. It is clear that Pyongyang pays close attention to new developments in AUKUS, but how much of the shift in North Korea’s grand strategy can actually be attributed to it?
AUKUS in a Dangerous Mosaic of “Tripartite Nuclear Alliances”
The main focus of North Korean media commentary about AUKUS is the perceived role it plays in spreading nuclear weapons in the Asia-Pacific. Shortly after the deal was announced in September 2021, Pyongyang slammed AUKUS as “an irresponsible act posing danger of nuclear proliferation and triggering an arms race.” The official KCNA report portrayed AUKUS as symbolic of the United States’ “double dealing” and “Janus-faced” foreign policy. Washington was depicted as the central aggressor seeking to undermine the global proliferation regime under the ruse of protecting a rules-based international order.
From North Korea’s perspective, AUKUS is not the only “tripartite nuclear alliance” to emerge in recent years. Pyongyang is even more sharply critical of the Japan-South Korea-U.S. trilateral that first met in August 2023. Although the summit was largely focused on bringing Japan and South Korea together to balance China’s growing maritime power in Northeast Asia, a commentary piece in the Pyongyang Times viewed the trilateral as evidence of a “triangular Asian NATO” emerging. When viewed together, AUKUS and the Japan-South Korea-U.S. trilateral are, for North Korea, interconnected parts in a broader “multilayered ring of nuclear encirclement” directed against it.
Although accusations of nuclear proliferation from Pyongyang may seem bewildering, contradictory, or even amusing, its rhetoric about AUKUS reflects a deep and persistent fear of externally imposed regime change led by the United States and its allies. Pyongyang’s strategic thinking is guided by the belief that it is surrounded by larger and hostile powers that seek to dominate it. The depiction and projection of AUKUS as a threat legitimizes the necessity of developing a nuclear deterrent to equalize the power imbalance to the North Korean people, who have had to tighten their belts repeatedly to ensure the program’s success.
North Korean depictions of AUKUS have racial and colonial dimensions as well. Successive North Korean media articles have described AUKUS as an “Anglo-Saxon nuclear submarine alliance” that aims to subordinate the Korean race. However, what sparks even greater indignation against AUKUS is Japan’s deepening military cooperation with its three members. Tokyo has been traditionally depicted by North Korean sources as a dormant but inherently militaristic power intent on recovering the Korean Peninsula if its expansionist tendencies are not kept in check. In Pyongyang’s view, this further justifies its nuclear weapons program.
AUKUS and North Korea’s Naval Build-Up
While it is difficult to deny that North Korea views AUKUS as one threat among others in an emerging structure of nuclear alliances, what remains unclear from its media commentary is whether AUKUS has directly affected Pyongyang’s increasingly active military posture. More proximate threats – such as South Korea’s “kill chain strategy,” the biannual South Korea-U.S. Exercise Ssang Yong, and the Japan-South Korea-U.S. trilateral – visibly occupy more of North Korea’s strategic attention than AUKUS does.
However, where AUKUS and North Korea’s actions are most plausibly linked is by Pyongyang’s ambitions to build a blue water navy. In August 2023, Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un warned that the “waters off the Korean Peninsula” had become the “most unstable” on earth. Although Kim’s remarks were largely directed at the United States, Japan, and South Korea, strategists in Pyongyang would be familiar with Australia’s participation in multilateral sanctions enforcement in the Yellow Sea. The Virginia-class SSNs that Australia is expected to procure under AUKUS will enable Canberra to shadow North Korean ships over long distances as the Korean Peninsula sits firmly within their operational range.
Australia’s interdiction of North Korean vessels has served as a major sticking point in their non-existent diplomatic relationship. Back in 2017, Pyongyang threatened Canberra with a nuclear strike for “zealously toeing the US’s line” after then-Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said that “all........