Tag: Cuba

The NIS must have helped with defection considering he defected by taking a flight to South Korea:

This March 19, 2024, file photo shows the North Korean Embassy in Cuba. (Yonhap)

A North Korean diplomat who had been stationed in Cuba defected to South Korea last year, South Korea’s spy agency said Tuesday, the latest in a small but growing number of defections by North Koreans in elite groups.

The National Intelligence Service confirmed a media report that Ri Il-gyu, who had served as the counselor of political affairs at the North’s embassy in Cuba, entered South Korea in November with his family. It did not provide further details.

The defection came as efforts were under way for South Korea to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. In February, the two countries forged formal ties in a surprise move widely seen as a setback to North Korea, which has long boasted about its brotherly ties with the Caribbean country.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully this outgoing North Korean ambassador to Cuba doesn’t have a date with an anti-aircraft gun waiting for him when he returns to Pyongyang:

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel (R) meets with North Korean Ambassador to Cuba Ma Chol-su at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana on March 16, 2024, in this photo captured from the president’s X.

North Korea’s ambassador to Cuba has paid a visit to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel before concluding his mission, the Cuban presidential office said, as Pyongyang is preparing to replace the envoy after Cuba’s surprising establishment of diplomatic ties with South Korea.

Diaz-Canel shared a brief video of Friday’s meeting with Ambassador Ma Chol-su on X, the former Twitter platform, saying he reassured the ambassador that Pyongyang could always rely on Cuba’s support, solidarity and friendship in all aspects. 

The president, who visited North Korea twice, also emphasized the brotherhood between the countries.

Ma is reported to have received the Friendship Medal from the president that day in recognition of his diplomatic service in Cuba for the past five years.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the timing of the change is making it look like he is being blamed for Cuba establishing formal diplomatic relations with South Korea.

It will be interesting to see if the opening of relations with Cuba will open increased trade with South Korea from the island nation:

South Korea established diplomatic relations with Cuba on Wednesday, its mission to the United Nations said, in a surprise announcement that could pose a setback to North Korea that has long boasted brotherly ties with the Latin American country.

In New York, the two countries’ representatives to the United Nations exchanged diplomatic notes marking the establishment of the formal ties. Cuba is the 193rd country which South Korea has built diplomatic relations with.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like Kim Jong-un is continuing his strategy of looking like a normal world leader by receiving presidents for state visits:

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has received Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel with “magnificent” welcoming events, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Monday, with Kim repeatedly stressing “the strategic and comradely friendship with Cuba.”

Diaz-Canel’s visit to North Korea marked the first by a Cuban president since former President Fidel Castro’s 1986 visit, though Diaz-Canel has traveled to North Korea before, meeting Kim Jong-un as Cuban vice president back in 2015.

According to the KCNA, Kim Jong-un and his wife Ri Sol-ju greeted Diaz-Canel and his wife Lis Cuesta Peraza at Pyongyang International Airport on Sunday.

Following a 21-gun salute from the Korean People’s Army, Kim and Diaz-Canel reviewed the honor guards of the KPA. The two leaders also took part in a car parade through the streets of Pyongyang to arrive at the Paekhwawon State Guest House, where the Cuban delegation would stay.  [Korea Times]

Here is something I did not realize, Cuba has its own Korean diaspora:

When Joseph Juhn first traveled to Cuba in 2015, the driver who was waiting for him at the airport in Havana expected to pick up a Canadian national.

Juhn, a Korean American lawyer who was flying in from Montreal, was also taken by surprise by the woman in the driver’s seat: a fourth-generation Korean Cuban.

Patricia Lim was the descendant of Korean indentured laborers who first migrated to Mexico, then to Cuba in 1921.

Juhn, who is currently producing a documentary on the Korean diaspora in Cuba, said Thursday he learned the experiences of Korean Cubans have intertwined with the history of a divided peninsula.

Not only did Korean Cubans take to the streets of Havana to celebrate Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, they were deeply affected by the division of the peninsula.

“While we were still enjoying our emancipation, something happened that should have never happened,” wrote Patricia’s grandfather Lim Cheon-taek, in a letter he wrote to his children.

Juhn, who reads the letter in the film’s voice-over, interviewed dozens of Korean Cubans, including Lim’s many descendants, some of who recently visited South Korea where Lim is honored and buried at the Korean National Cemetery in Daejeon.  [UPI]

You can read more at the link.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pays tribute to the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro at the Cuban Embassy in Pyongyang on Nov. 28, 2016, in this photo released by the North’s ruling party organ Rodong Sinmun the next day. (Yonhap)

After getting Uganda to cut relations with North Korea I have to wonder if South Korea is now trying to get Cuba to do so as well:

South Korean Foreign Affairs Minister Yun Byung-se sat down for a face-to-face meeting with his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez here on Sunday, the first foreign ministerial meeting between the two countries in nearly six decades.

The 75-minute closed-door meeting was held on the sidelines of the seventh summit of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), which ran for three days since Friday.

Yun departed Seoul on Saturday to become the first foreign minister from South Korea to visit Havana since diplomatic ties were severed in 1959 following the Cuban revolution.

Havana is a close ally of Pyongyang, and diplomatic analysts say restoring ties will not be easy. Cuba is one of four countries Seoul has yet to normalize ties with. The three others are Syria, Kosovo and Macedonia.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Here is a small example of one of the illegal scams the Kim regime has operating around the world to bring in foreign currency:

Two North Korean diplomats have been caught smuggling a large stash of top-end Cuban cigars into Brazil.

The two were arrested at Campinas International Airport in São Paulo, according to the Brazilian daily O Estado.

Both are trade attaches at the North Korean Consulate there.

They had come from Cuba via Panama carrying 3,800 cigars worth W90-150 million in six travel bags (US$1=W1,133).

Cigar smuggling is apparently a common sideline for North Korean diplomats in Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela who are under growing pressure from Pyongyang to earn valuta.

Top-end Cohiba Cigars sell for W40,000-50,000 apiece, but the North Koreans can buy them for 1/10 of that money in the Cuban black market.  [Chosun Ilbo]