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.