My life at a Korean law firm (part 31)
Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang. Yonhap
Visiting the North Korean embassy
By Jacco Zwetsloot
North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) first normalized diplomatic relations with Australia in July 1974 and opened an embassy in Canberra in December of that year.
Australia reciprocated by opening its own legation in Pyongyang in early 1975. The story of how both embassies were suddenly and unilaterally closed in November 1975 is a fascinating one, but not one that I observed directly.
Adrian Buzo, an Australian diplomat at the time and now an academic, lived through that tumult within Pyongyang and recounted the whole story in an interview with me in episode 6 of my NK News podcast, which you can easily find online.
My story today is about the second “normalization” of bilateral relations. In 2000, Australia and North Korea pressed the metaphorical reset button on their relationship, and in 2002 two DPRK diplomats were dispatched to Canberra to prepare for opening an embassy. This was during the Sunshine Policy period, when there was much hope that reform and openness would transform North Korea from the inside.
However, it was some time before there was visible progress. There were unsourced reports in the media that the diplomats were wiling away their days engaged in recreational fishing on Lake Burley Griffin (it holds a good stock of carp, popular in North Korean cuisine), and that it was taking more time than anticipated to find an appropriate rental property and procure the funding.
Eventually the website of the Australian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade posted some information including an address and a phone number. While embassies of wealthy countries are often located in the Yarralumla district of Canberra, there are also several diplomatic offices in the more modest neighborhood of O'Malley. It was here, at number 57 Culgoa Circuit, that the DPRK raised its flag outside a large two-story building.
As I learned from reading Thae Yong-ho's memoirs this year, North Korean embassies often combine the functions of chancery and residence in one structure; living and working together makes it easier for the diplomats to keep an eye on each other. This ensures both ongoing loyalty and ideological purity. In the same street were located the embassies of fellow “Axis of Evil” club members (remember, this was 2002) Iran and Iraq. Fellow rogue state Syria was also a neighbor.
As soon as I learned that a diplomatic office was opening, I looked for ways to make contact. The first time I was able to get somebody on the phone from the embassy, they explained that they were very busy, having difficulties setting up a computer system, and did not have a working email address.
Later, I received in the post a print out of the text of a speech given by newly arrived Ambassador Chon Jae Hong at the Australian Institute of International Affairs, in which he said: “I would like also to emphasize that the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea attaches a great significance to the development of friendly and cooperative relations with Australia, and is ready to develop these relations through the exchanges of various delegations, constructive and productive dialogue and cooperation, and to make contribution to prosperity, stability and peace of the region by promoting mutual understanding between the two countries.”
Over time I was able to establish friendly telephonic contact with Second Secretary Ma Tong-hui. He invited me to visit the embassy if I should ever be in Canberra. In the summer of 2002-03, my wife and two friends and I made the long drive to that city up from Melbourne for a four-day visit. On one of those days, I dropped the others off at a museum and drove to the embassy by myself. Ma was friendly and informal, and led me into a kind of sitting room on the ground floor. It was sparsely decorated; the portraits of Kim father and son that I had expected to see were absent. We drank tea and spoke for about an hour. I told him that I was doing a degree in Korean Studies in Melbourne and expressed an interest in seeing relations between my country and his improve, as well as between the two Koreas.
On that note, Ma told me that some South Korean or Korean-Australian people had turned up at the embassy to check it out, half expecting him and his colleagues to be carrying guns in holsters. He laughed and said something about anti-North Korean propaganda in the South. At the end of our conversation, I was given some North Korean magazines and thanked for my interest. I never visited the embassy again, and my contact with Ma evaporated soon after, as the embassy had some rather more pressing matters to attend to.
In April 2003, when the Pong Su ship was captured off the coast of New South Wales and all the crew of 31 arrested for allegedly smuggling heroin, Australian-North Korean bilateral relations took a sharp nosedive. The embassy did not openly become involved in the case; the official stance was that this ship was held by a privately owned North Korean company, and the state was certainly not involved in any drug smuggling. Nevertheless, Ambassador Chon was summoned to meet Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who only three years earlier had visited Pyongyang to revive bilateral relations with North Korea in an atmosphere of hope and mutual trust. A strong but diplomatic message of Australian opprobrium was delivered.
Four men eventually came to stand trial in that case. When their lawyer applied for bail, one million Australian dollars was offered as a surety, and the DPRK embassy said it would offer the defendants housing within its premises until such time they were needed in court in Melbourne. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the court declined to release the men on bail.
After I returned to Seoul, things looked even worse for the DPRK embassy (there is no causal link between these two facts, as far as I know). North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon on October 9, 2006, and the Australian government, along with the rest of the world, was extremely displeased.
As well as calling in Ambassador Chon to the foreign ministry for another carpeting, travel restrictions were placed on all the North Korean diplomats, meaning they could not travel very far beyond the embassy premises. Furthermore, the foreign currency that the legation had hoped to earn for Pyongyang in trade deals and consular fees did not amount to much. At last, in December 2007, the North Korean government announced its plans to close the Australian embassy the following month, having been operational for approximately five years. It was believed that North Korea had chosen to expend its limited foreign diplomacy resources on its renewed relationship with Myanmar.
After leaving Australia, my contact Ma Tong-hui became head of a Pyongyang-based organization named the Disarmament and Peace Institute. In 2010, he wrote a monograph entitled “Reunification of Korea Is a Major Security Issue on the Korean Peninsula: The North Korean Perspective,” which is even listed on the website of a well-known internet bookseller.
In early January 2017, Ma arrived in Cairo to serve as the new DPRK ambassador to Egypt and Eritrea, replacing Pak Chun Il, who had been personally named in U.N. and U.S. sanctions for alleged involvement in North Korea's arms trade after a large shipment of rocket-propelled grenades was intercepted en route. Somewhat ironically, given Ma's previous position as head of the Disarmament and Peace Institute, media reports in early 2018 say that weapons, including missiles, are still sold through the DPRK embassy in Cairo.
As to what happened to Ambassador H.E. Chon Jae Hong after leaving Australia a decade ago, I have no information.