In a significant move, India is going to upgrade its relations with North Korea, The Hindu reports.
An indication of this came when Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju joined a function to mark the national Independence Day of North Korea in New Delhi recently.
Talking to Hindu, Rijiju said the Indo-North Korean ties, which remained cold due to Pyongyang’s close ties with Islamabad, is soon going to improve.
The sign of it came last April when North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un sent his Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong to Delhi.
To confirm the warming ties between the two nations, Rijiju posted a few photographs on the event on his Facebook page.
According to him, North Korea is an independent country and UN member and India should have health ties with that nation.
Rijiju may be the first Indian minister to ever address a bilateral event featuring the North Korean flag on the national Independence Day.
CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, who had led a three-member parliamentary delegation to Pyongyang in July 2013, was also present at the function.
Yechury described Rijiju’s participation at the event as a significant diplomatic step.
Rijiju agreed.
“We have been discussing inside the government ways and means of upgrading bilateral ties with North Korea ever since the North Korean Foreign Minister visited Delhi last April,” he told the major newspaper.
What makes India warm up to North Korea is its business interest.
North Korea has large deposits of minerals and rare earth metals necessary for India’s IT industry and electronic majors.
“There is a rush for strategic resources in the countries like North Korea that were blockaded and sanctioned away from global economy. India should be an early bird in North Korea just in case North Korean economic ties with the world undergo change in near future,” Hamdullah Saeed, a former Congress MP who travelled with Yechury to Pyongyang, told Hindu.
Meanwhile, South Korea will not be happy to note improved trade ties between India and North Korea.
Hence, India has to tread carefully without upsetting Seoul which is India’s major trading partner.