NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, right, holds a statement with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken before a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) (Virginia Mayo/AP)

BRUSSELS — NATO and the European Union are stepping up efforts to persuade China to help get North Korea to stop sending troops and other aid to Russia to support its war on Ukraine.

Up to 12,000 North Korean troops have been sent to Russia’s Kursk border region to help push back Ukrainian forces there, according to US, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence agencies. NATO says Russia is sending missile technology to North Korea in return.

With Russia leveraging its military advantages in Ukraine, the United States wants its allies to exert political pressure on China to rein in North Korea. Since Pyongyang and Beijing established diplomatic relations in 1949, their relationship has been described as “as close as lips and teeth.”

One political lever is the threat of increased Western activity in China’s backyard, the Asia-Pacific region. Just last week, the EU sealed security pacts with regional powers Japan and South Korea.

In an opinion piece for Politico last week, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said that “China has a particular responsibility here, to use its influence in Pyongyang and Moscow to ensure that they stop these actions. Beijing cannot pretend to promote peace while turning a blind eye to increasing aggression.”

On a visit to Latvia on Thursday, Rutte warned that the exchange of missile technology in particular poses “a direct threat, not only to Europe, but also to Japan, South Korea and the US mainland.” Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand now regularly participate in NATO meetings.

On Wednesday, after talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he also said that “the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific must really be seen as one theater, and not as two separate ones”, and that “our security, therefore, is more and more global now, and we have to see this as a global issue.”

While North Korea and Russia have grown significantly closer, many observers say China is reluctant to form a three-way, anti-Western alliance with them because it prefers a stable security environment to deal with economic challenges and maintain relations with Europe and its Asian neighbors.

In a blog published on Thursday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell recounted his recent trip to Japan and South Korea, where North Korea’s troop deployment and other aid to Russia were on the agenda.

“This marks an escalation of the utmost seriousness, which of course was at the heart of our discussions with the Japanese and South Korean leaders,” wrote Borrell, who also spoke to Blinken on Wednesday.

Borrell hailed the conclusion during his trip of new security and defense partnerships with Japan and South Korea, “the first outside of Europe.”

“The EU was certainly not born as a military alliance, but in the current geopolitical context it can and must also become a global security provider and partner,” he wrote.

Blinken said this week that the Biden administration is determined in its final months to help ensure Ukraine can continue to fight the full-scale invasion next year by sending as much aid as possible to keep Russian forces at bay or strengthen its hand in any peace negotiations.