TOKYO: It has been over a month since Syrian President Bashaar Assad was deposed, but neither the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor its media have mentioned anything about the coup or Assad’s exile in Russia, according to Korea Report.

Syria’s former President Hafez al-Assad shared a brotherly relationship with Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong-Un, and their children inherited power in the two dictatorships. The model for Syria’s ruling Ba’ath Party was the Workers’ Party of Korea.

North Korea sent troops to Syria during the Yom Kippur War with Israel in 1973, provided technical assistance for the construction of nuclear facilities in northern Syria – they were destroyed in an Israeli attack in 2007 – and fully supported the Assad regime.

It sent weapons and military advisors when civil war broke out in Syria in 2011 and even provided guards for Assad. Under Assad, Syria was the only Middle Eastern country that did not recognize South Korea.

The report says the last time North Korea mentioned Syria was on Dec. 5, three days before the collapse of the Assad regime, when a foreign ministry spokesman responded to a question from the Korean Central News Agency.

Since then, reports about Syria have disappeared from North Korean media. The only Middle Eastern situation reported by the state-run Korean Central News Agency and the Rodong Sinmun is Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip and its bombing of Lebanon.

The spokesman was quoted as saying: “The situation in Syria is worsening by the minute due to terrorists’ reckless military maneuvers.” It asserted that these “terrorists” were “under the political manipulation and military support of external forces” and were massacring innocent civilians.

“It is the product of a vile conspiracy by hostile forces seeking to ‘demonize’ the legitimate Syrian government, bring insecurity and fear to the country and continue to push the situation in the Middle East towards a catastrophic situation by replicating in Syria the genocide scenarios in Gaza and Lebanon.”

“We strongly condemn the reckless military maneuverings being carried out by terrorists in Syria and the impure intentions of the forces behind it that are condoning and encouraging it, and express our full support and solidarity with the just struggle of the Syrian government and people to defend the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and resolve the crisis, as well as the efforts of Arab countries to realize solid peace and stability in the Middle East region.”

North Korea noted how the Gaddafi regime of Libya collapsed after it agreed to completely abandon its nuclear development, declaring: “It suffered under the threats and blackmail of US imperialism, and destroyed and abandoned the national defense capabilities it had built up until. That’s what it got for abandoning (nuclear weapons).”