India has relations with North Korea to monitor North Korea's activities with neighbors like Pakistan and to encourage the North not to proliferate or conduct other illicit activities.

So said Nicholas Hamisevicz, director of research and academic affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI), who spoke with NK News last week on North Korea's role in South Asia. Though China-North Korea relations and Northeast Asian relations have been in the media spotlight, Hamisevicz believes both Koreas' interactions with India, South Asia's major power, are important because they highlight the Korean Peninsula's impact outside of just Northeast Asia. Hamisevicz, who first became interested in India-Korea relations as a research associate in the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, said India-North Korea relations are interesting because of the consistent low-level interaction between the two countries in India's provision of humanitarian aid and trade engagement with North Korea and, then, there are upswings in activity high-level ministerial meetings through venues such as ASEAN.