Why North Korea is closing its embassies around the world

North Korea has closed its embassies in Uganda, Angola and Spain. The official reason is financial difficulties. Soon a dozen more diplomatic missions will cease their work. Experts called this a serious shake-up in North Korea's foreign policy. View of the DPRK Embassy building in Madrid.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has decided to permanently close its embassy in Madrid, the South Korean newspaper Korea Times reported on November 1, citing a relevant document. According to Pyongyang's decision, the embassy in Italy will take over diplomatic and consular functions in Spain.

And on October 30, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported the closure of North Korean embassies in two African countries - Angola and Uganda. In the previous days, North Korean ambassadors paid farewell visits to them, informing the authorities about the decision to close the diplomatic missions and conveying “warm greetings” from Kim Jong-un. Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni responded with gratitude for the assistance provided in the past and recalled his meetings with the late first leader of the DPRK Kim Il Sung, while Angolan President João Lourenço wished North Korea economic success and expressed hope for further development of cooperation.

RBC sent a request to the DPRK Embassy in Moscow.

What scandals were associated with the DPRK embassy in Madrid

The Spanish Communist Party said IT learned of the North Korean authorities' decision to close the embassy on October 26. According to her information, this is due to “the impossibility of developing mutually beneficial relations with government agencies, commercial and cultural organizations due to the application of sanctions that the American imperialists impose on their vassals in the EU and, accordingly, on the Spanish government.”

The DPRK embassy in the Spanish capital was opened relatively recently, in 2013, but already in 2017, Ambassador Kim Hyok Chol was declared persona non grata and expelled; The reason was Pyongyang's nuclear tests and missile launches. After him, the representative office was headed by the charge d'affaires.

Former acting North Korean Ambassador to Kuwait Ryu Hyun Woo told the NK News portal that the decision to close the embassy in Spain could be related, among other things, to the expulsion of Kim. According to Ryu, after it the diplomatic mission in Madrid brought “neither political nor economic practical benefit.” Another incident is associated with the DPRK Embassy in Madrid, which occurred in February 2019, shortly before the summit of the 45th US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in Hanoi. A group of ten people broke into the building, held its employees for several hours, and took out computers and other storage media. According to Spanish investigators, the attackers, allegedly American, members of the Free Joseon organization, which opposes the North Korean regime, then tried to transfer data stolen from the embassy to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, possibly relating to Kim Hyok Chol, now the DPRK's lead negotiator on nuclear issues.

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In February 2023, the DPRK Embassy in Spain issued a statement calling on the Spanish government to make efforts to quickly resolve the incident “based on the principles of self-reliance and justice.” “The United States should formally apologize for the incident of attack on the DPRK embassy in Spain and make reparations, as well as arrest and immediately hand over all the perpetrators,” said a statement released by KCNA. The Communist Party of Spain also condemned the local authorities for their passivity in the matter of extraditing the embassy attackers and suggested that the attack could have occurred with the permission of the Spanish intelligence services.

What other embassies is North Korea closing?

According to the South Korean Yonhap agency, the reason for the closure of African embassies, as in the case of the Spanish one, was financial problems. As the agency notes, for several years Angola was one of the key African sources of hard currency for the North Korean regime, which supplied labor there. But after another round of UN sanctions in 2017, local authorities terminated contracts with the North Korean construction company Mansudae and ordered all its workers to leave the country.

On October 27, the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported, citing North Korean sources, that the DPRK would soon close its consulate general in Hong Kong. The publication also attributes this decision to economic difficulties and the too high cost of living in the region, which have made it difficult for Pyongyang to maintain its mission in Hong Kong. The DPRK, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun, informed the Chinese authorities about its plans in mid-October, and the trade mission could take over the functions of the consulate.

In general, according to the publication, Pyongyang plans to close more than a dozen diplomatic missions (in total it now has about 50), both in Africa and in other parts of the world.

What does the closure of diplomatic missions mean?

The South Korean Ministry of Unification, which is responsible for relations with the DPRK, linked the wave of closures to international sanctions. According to the department, they make it very difficult to obtain hard currency needed to maintain embassies. “This may indicate the difficult economic situation in North Korea, which is increasingly finding it difficult to maintain even minimal diplomatic relations with traditionally friendly countries,” a ministry official told Yonhap on condition of anonymity.

The UN Security Council imposed international sanctions against North Korea in 2006 after the country's first nuclear test. In the following years, as North Korea's nuclear and missile programs developed, sanctions were expanded several times. Currently, under UN sanctions:

the Export to the DPRK of weapons, military equipment, dual-use technologies, aviation and rocket fuel, natural gas, metals, industrial equipment, vehicles and luxury goods is prohibited ; imports from the DPRK of coal, seafood, textiles, electrical appliances, wood and other natural resources; the assets of many North Korean individuals and legal entities have been frozen; supplies of oil and petroleum products to the DPRK are limited ; North Korean banks are prohibited from opening foreign branches; a limit has been set on the hiring of North Korean workers.

The United States, Australia , Japan , South Korea and the European Union have also imposed unilateral sanctions against North Korea.

According to South Korean authorities, although the DPRK maintains diplomatic relations with 159 countries, as of early October the country had only 53 diplomatic missions abroad, including 47 embassies, three consulates and three representative offices at various organizations. With the closure of embassies in Uganda, Angola and Spain, as well as the consulate in Hong Kong, their number will drop to 49.

If the Yomiuri Shimbun’s information is confirmed, then the decrease in the DPRK’s diplomatic presence will be even more significant – by almost 25%, noted Chad O’Carroll, analyst and founder of the NK News portal. In his opinion, such a development will affect not only Pyongyang’s foreign policy, but also the effectiveness of its efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to a country that regularly suffers from food shortages, as well as income from foreign trade activities carried out in circumvention of the sanctions regime.

According to NK News, in the near future the DPRK will carry out the first rotation of diplomats in its largest missions since the pandemic, including the embassy in London and the permanent mission at UN headquarters in New York. All this creates the preconditions for “one of the largest foreign policy shake-ups in recent decades” for Kim Jong-un, O’Carroll concluded.

Leading researcher at the Center for Korean Studies at the Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Konstantin Asmolov, in a conversation with RBC, urged not to rush to conclusions, suggesting that the DPRK may simply be optimizing. “We shouldn’t exaggerate the significance of this step by making it seem like things are so bad in North Korea that they closed the embassy. So far we are talking about countries where the North Korean diplomatic presence is already minimal: there is no diaspora, there are no opportunities for political and economic ties. Why keep people there?” - Asmolov explained. Commenting on reports about Pyongyang's plans to close about a dozen other embassies, the expert recalled that often media publications about North Korea turn out to be exaggerated and one should proceed from official information.