A long-time Korea watcher has written of North Korea joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), saying that membership requirements could be leveraged in such a way as to foster progress on economic and security challenges.

In a post authored for 38 North, Bradley O. Babson, a former World Bank official, called the emergence of the AIIB “surprisingly robust,” with 57 founding member countries potentially able to fund unfulfilled infrastructure projects across the world’s largest continent.

Though he acknowledged North Korea’s difficulty in meeting the AIIB’s membership requirements, he noted the absence of the U.S. and Japan from the