Humiliations pile up for North Korea’s dwindling diplomatic corps

SEOUL, South Korea – It’s not easy being a diplomat in Kim Jong-un’s North Korea.

A string of embassy closures, defections and the elevation of a diplomat-defector to a prominent position in Seoul have left the North’s foreign service facing unprecedented pressures.

The Kim regime’s global diplomatic footprint — never large to begin with — has been shrinking since last year. Last week, a former North Korean diplomat and prominent critic of the regime took on a vice-ministerial position in Seoul. Just days before, it was revealed that a diplomat from Pyongyang’s Cuban Embassy had defected.

Despite the blows to prestige, none of these shocks are likely to jolt the stability of the Kim regime, which retains near-total control of power in the isolated state. The shrinkage of overseas missions reflects Pyongyang’s declining need for far-flung diplomatic engagement. While diplomats in many societies are respected, in North Korea, they are neither policymakers nor elite players.

At the same time, a key mission for North Korean diplomats – bring home desperately needed foreign currency, by means fair or foul – has come under pressure even as it has fallen in importance. Thanks to the Ukraine war, Pyongyang has won a powerful new economic and political patron in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Still, the public relations hits to the North’s diplomatic profile must sting. Earlier last week, Tae Yong-ho was named to a vice-ministerial position on the Peaceful Reunification Council, a presidential advisory body. That makes him the highest-ranked defector ever to serve in a Seoul government, according to South Korean media reports.

Mr. Tae, Pyongyang’s one-time deputy ambassador to the U.K., defected in 2016. He won a seat in the National Assembly in 2020 with the conservative People Power Party, a position he lost in this year’s parliamentary elections. A prominent and vocal critic of North Korea, the new position offers him a new bully pulpit.

He is not alone.

It was revealed this week by multiple South Korean media outlets, citing official sources, that Ri Il-gyu, former political counselor at North Korea’s Cuban Embassy, had entered South Korea.

“A couple of dozen” diplomats have defected over the last 25 years, said Bob Collins, a longtime advisor to the U.S. forces in South Korea on North Korean matters.

Not all escapes of ex-officials are made public, but it is known that the defections come not only from British and Cuban, but also Pyongyang’s Kuwaiti, Italian and Vietnamese missions as well.

“North Korean diplomats see the world for what it is,” Mr. Collins said. “They find that they are going to be much better off if they defect to the democratic world.”

Mr. Ri’s experiences in Cuba, a fellow communist state, may be especially significant.

“This tells me that Cuba is not even close to being as restrictive as North Korea,” Mr. Collins said.

Pyongyang employs harsh control mechanisms.

“Fear is the No. 1 weapon the regime uses to control its overseas diplomats,” Mr. Collins explained. “Usually, family members of North Korean diplomats remain at home as hostages.”

Mr. Ri escaped with his family, but his defection may have been prompted by professional failure: In February, Seoul and Havana established diplomatic relations.

“He was supposed to oppose a South Korean embassy opening up in Cuba and failed,” Mr. Collins said. “He knew he was in trouble and would be held responsible.”

Cutting back

The backdrop to Mr. Tae and Mr. Ri’s activities is a broad North Korean diplomatic retrenchment.

North Korea lacks official diplomatic representation in Japan, South Korea or the United States but maintains a mission to the U.N. in New York and major embassies in China and Russia. Smaller missions operate in other major world capitals, including Berlin, Jakarta, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Stockholm and Vienna.

Still, the overall footprint is shrinking.

Last November, Pyongyang closed missions in Angola, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Nepal, Senegal, Spain and Uganda. Late last year, South Korea, which has 152 missions in 109 countries, estimated that North Korea maintained 46 overseas diplomatic posts, fewer than a third of its rival.

The reductions are is deliberate, according to Andrei Lankov, a regime watcher at Seoul’s Kookmin University.

“This is not disarray, more a planned retreat,” he said. “The service is going through restructuring, as the old one was outsized for its tasks.”

Overseas missions are a financial burden on cash-strapped Pyongyang. That is particularly so as one essential mandate of North Korean diplomats – seeking new sources of foreign exchange for the isolated economy back home – now faces increasing international oversight.

“Embassies have been a dwindling source of revenue for at least a decade due to sanctions and expanded counter-intelligence,” said Chad O’Carroll, CEO of Korea Risk Group. “And normal embassy functions – consular services, trade, etc – offer zero value.”

The Kim regime’s political isolation has also played a role.

“For a long time, they were dreaming about playing great and not-so-great powers against each other and [establishing] aid-maximizing schemes,” said Mr. Lankov. “They can’t do that anymore.”

At home, the North’s diplomats enjoy little influence. Mr. O’Carroll notes that major diplomatic exchanges of recent years, such as those with the Trump administration, were led by national intelligence and senior regime figures, not the foreign service corps.

And with most foreign embassies in Pyongyang still shuttered in the wake of a stringent national COVID lockdown, a foreign diplomat in Seoul suggested reciprocity may pose yet another challenge to the North’s beleaguered diplomats.

“If we can’t reopen our embassies in Pyongyang, it raises the question of whether we should let them maintain embassies in our cities,” the person said.

None of these matters affect regime stability. In fact, a crack has recently opened in Pyongyang’s long-term isolation.

Since its founding in 1948, North Korea has defied overseas predictions by overcoming a series of existential challenges.

It survived the Korean War thanks to Chinese intervention. The ruling Kim regime managed to preserve and pass power through three generations. Pyongyang mastered – at dreadful human cost – a famine that racked the country after its long-term trade with the USSR collapsed.

Since then, China has extended a tenuous economic lifeline. North Korea has won another partner – at least, for now.

“The war in Ukraine is an engine moving interactions between Russia and North Korea,” said Mr. Lankov. “As long as the war continues, there will be military cooperation.”