The leaders of North Korea, China and Russia may not be the cohesive bloc they presented themselves to be during the massive military parade held in Beijing last week, according to the latest assessment by South Korea’s spy agency.

Democratic Party Rep. Park Sun-won, who attended a closed-door briefing by the National Intelligence Service(NIS) on Thursday, conveyed the assessment by the agency to reporters, which noted that although North Korea, China and Russia showed their three-way alliance in pictures, there has been no progress in a trilateral summit or establishing a concrete policy consultation platform for what they plan to do in the future.
 
Referring to information he heard during the briefing, Park said there was an apparent difference in positions between North Korea and China based on the countries’ respective reports on the outcome of their summit.

He pointed out that China had disclosed that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un expressed a desire to “deepen reciprocal economic cooperation,” while North Korea made no mention of it.

The NIS assessed that the two sides may not be in complete agreement as North Korea called on China to ease sanctions and expand economic cooperation, but China did not sufficiently respond. North Korea also did not want to expose its desire for economic cooperation with China to the outside world, according to another analysis.

With regard to the North Korea-Russia talks, the lawmaker explained that Kim expressed his willingness to prolong their alliance, but Putin did not talk about bilateral relations or the future, raising questions over whether the North Korean leader gained as much as he intended from the two allies.