 And now we have our final session. Balash Alante of Korea University will present on MENA related foreign policy. Let me save a little time. Sorry, Balash. North Korean discovers the Margrethe, propaganda narratives in the formative phase of Pyongyang's North West African diplomacy, or just MENA foreign policy, as I just called it. So Balash, if you could present for 20 minutes, and then we will, then John will be act as discussant, and we should finish, what's our finishing time tonight? Five. Five. We're going to finish at five, and then we'll have closing remarks, wrap up, tears, commemorative, we should get some commemorative photos as well. Okay. So yes, please, Balash, take it away. I will act as, Balash, what was that? Okay. Sit down everyone. All right, if everyone is now seated, and Kevin is now seated. Okay. Take it away. Can you hear me now? No, no, can't hear you. It's not on, it's not on. The buttons are front, the buttons front. Okay. Okay. Now it's better. Sorry. Okay. So first of all, I need some sort of justification because it's very easy, you know, to start the presentation saying, oh, this particular subject has not been covered by others before. And it's a crying shame that nobody did it. And of course, definitely it's a crying shame in current studies. Nobody ever wrote a monograph about North Korean opinion about Antarctica. Can you prove that anybody ever did? See. So of course I could adopt this approach and it's very easy to do, but I tried to present some more important argument in favor. And the first I would like to mention that Algeria specifically was some really important actor in North Korean diplomacy, especially in the 1970s. When North Korea wants to join the non-aligned movement, they absolutely needed Algerian support to get inside. And in fact, it enabled Algeria to blackmail North Korea and force them to recognize the Sahravi Arab Democratic Republic, which no other socialist country was willing to recognize around that time. So it is definitely something interesting. If you look at the literature that we have a lot of publication relatively on North Korean relations with Iran and Syria and sometimes Libya, a little bit about Egypt. But this particular part, the region of the Arab world is kind of neglected. And from this example you can see from the Algerian example, it's not because it was not important for North Korea. So it's a little bit a kind of like tricky question why it was kind of still overlooked, even though people kind of recognized that it was important, but still they did not study it in depth. And the second reason why I feel there is some reason to look into this matter that through this concrete examples we can understand something deeper about North Korean development, the development of North Korean diplomacy. Because in the narratives, even now recently, very recently, after the archival sources became often much more accessible than any time before, we still have this image about North Korea, which is reproducing the North Korean narrative that North Korea was kind of especially successful in gaining the friendship of developing third world countries, non-aligned countries. And they also had some sort of like attraction to North Korea. And it's really interesting to look into this matter how much this narrative is truthful and how much it's some sort of retrospective and manipulated one. So to mention kind of one very concrete example that usually in this narrative, North Korea is implicitly or even explicitly contrasted with East Germany. East Germany being a Soviet dominated country, not doing anything like too much independently. And North Korea is like the Juche foreign policy and everything. And then people draw the conclusion North Korea must have been like more successful in gaining the friendship of developing countries. This is also non-European country, non-white country, former colonized country, independent mind country, all that. And if you look into it anywhere, in fact what we see that in many of the Arab countries, the first gains and footholds are made by the East Germans overtaking North Korea. Algeria is a very interesting exception to this rule and we are going to look into this matter. But I would like to start by emphasizing this point because it shows that the logic of these countries is also very important to understand. It's not enough to look at them from a current perspective, we should look into their own motivations that how they decide to pick friends and why they attracted to one country or less attracted to another. So having said that, I also would like to mention one more thing in this matter that which is also a matter of greater importance that how exactly North Korean worldview, North Korean policy, North Korean thinking became independent from the original Soviet model which they kind of got implanted. Because it's very much like a political sensitive question and sometimes people tries to trace back this independent thinking even in the early 50s or even before, sometimes they deny it as long as possible. So it's very interesting to look into this matter that when North Korea is trying to form an opinion about countries with which it never had any historical connection like Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, how they discovered them for themselves, how they form an opinion, how their ideas and images are different from other socialist countries. So to start with the first example for which I presented some like statistical examples here, I looked into how Nodong Shin Moon covered the North African countries Tunisia. Is it on slide? A little bit more, yes, just a little bit more. Yes, this is it. So when North Korea looked at these countries Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and how they covered them and especially how often they published articles about them. Now, of course, this looks a very dry statistical analysis, but to make it more understandable, I would like to point out a few basic things. First of all, if you can see it a year, this is 1951-52. This is a time when the Korean war is going on, the whole country is totally devastated, bombed by the Americans. They have probably the most horrible experiences of the whole history. And in this very period, Nodong Shin Moon keeps writing like crazy about Tunisia and Morocco, how they are oppressed by the French. Now this is something which is a little bit different, difficult to understand why exactly this was so important for the North Korean working peasantry and working class, what is happening in Tunisia at that time. It's getting a bit more easier to understand if you compare it with the statistics of the East German part newspaper, Nice Deutschland. This would look even better on some sort of graph because if you look deeper, you can see that not only the years, but even the months are more or less overlapping. Whenever the East Germans write a lot about this or that particular country, usually North Korea does. When the East Germans feel it's not necessary, the North Koreans also don't cover it. Well, it would be kind of, of course, unreasonable to assume that the North Koreans looked at East Germany. The very logical explanation, both of them looked at Pravda. And I could have added Pravda to the list with a problem that some Pravda issues are missing from my collection and I could never get them. So otherwise I cannot present a full set of statistics, but what I found is totally matching it. Usually Pravda is first, and a few days, sometimes a few weeks later, the others follow suit. Now this is important for our big friend, it must be important for us. Then they are not interested, it goes down. So this is first very important point. It shows that when North Korea starts forming an opinion about these countries and what sort of things are happening there, they are very much influenced by the whole Soviet bloc's official position on that. The second and more interesting detail is that actually, not only during the Korean War, even after the Korean War, the North Koreans are actually lagging behind East Germany in several respects, slower to respond, less to write about these countries, and less detailed. So we absolutely don't see that because North Korea is a non-European country, former colonial country, they show a stronger interest in these colonial countries, more the opposite. They rather react in a way that it's very far away and we have our own troubles and things like that. For the Germans, it's much more like more important and topical matter, partly because they have their own oriental studies going back for many years, partly because it's a problem of the French and France is very important from a German perspective. So we can see from this that in practice when North Korea starts forming an opinion about these countries, it's first very much reflecting the general Soviet bloc narrative and it's not getting like something more than that, rather less than that. Even compared to some other East European countries, they are first less interested. We have our own troubles, this is the logic probably. What we can see when they first start to diverge from this pattern and doing something different from the East German or say Hungarian pattern, this first you can like notice around 58. And then it comes very much similar parallel to the Chinese logic. What the Chinese think and say about this or that problem, many ways North Korea is reproducing it. Like for example, recognizing the provision of government of Algeria in September 58, which the Soviets, the East Europeans are unwilling to do, but the Chinese do. And after it, North Korea follows suit and also North Vietnam follows suit. So this is the first time when you notice that North Korea adopts a more radical attitude than the Soviet bloc and more like actively interested in doing something which they are not willing to do. But still, if you compare North Korea with say North Vietnam or China, again, it's a little bit lagging behind. Like for example, when the new provisional Algerian government sends delegations to China and North Vietnam in 1958-59, at that time they still don't send it to North Korea as well, only to these two countries. Vietnam being a former French colony before, so this is a kind of special importance. Only 1960, first time they send it to North Korea. And there is a document in translated, as far as I remember, by Pierre Asseline and it's available in the Wilson Center Digital Archives, quoting the Algerian government making a memorandum from 1960 that which foreign countries we should consult before making an important decision. And they make a list of all Arab countries, the Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam. North Korea, no, sorry, not important enough. So this is important to keep in mind because in the literature then you would see statements like did you know very freely, you know, thrown around that the Algerians were extremely grateful from this recognition or you find that after North Korea recognized the Algerian government, it very much helped them to establish context with the Arab countries. No, sorry. This happening in 1958 and it starts only in the 60s, around 63 or later when the other Arab countries are willing to do anything with North Korea. So this is a kind of very nice narrative. Unfortunately, the facts don't support it. So to mention some more details which are really important here that the North Koreans do adopt this approach like the Chinese that if we have some sort of like, you know, armed struggle in this area of the world, it is useful and better than some sort of negotiated process. Well, you can understand why from this for the Soviets who had diplomatic relationship with France for the East European countries who had the diplomatic relationship with France. The idea of provoking the French was not really necessarily a good idea. For the North Koreans, so who cares? We have no diplomatic relationship with the French, so what? So you can see a very interesting example in 1959 when first Charles de Gaulle makes a kind of very conditional and cautious but still important step forward saying that like self-determination for Algeria it is possible if this and this. Like for example, we are going to have a referendum after several years and then this is, but still self-determination. It's mentioned as a possibility, as a right, as an option. Which is of course for the French ultra, it's a horrible idea. No, this is for three departments. It's our part of our country. This is the start when they start preparing for killing him as you know from the day of the jacqueline. So in this matter it's very interesting that when the French make this kind of announcement, de Gaulle makes it. At first the affluent Algerian liberation front is kind of ambiguous on the matter. And also the other communist countries first wait out. But then in October, like middle, a little bit after mid-October the Chinese first finally forcefully came out saying it's a lie, it's a trick, it's deceit, reject it. And then little bit later, Khrushchev himself declares oh, it's a good initiative. So the North Koreans now see two different approaches, the whole thing. A little bit still, they still wait. In November they come out. It's a trick, it's a lie. So you can see from there, they don't openly say we support the Chinese, they don't openly say we reject the Soviet approach. But in practice you can very clearly position them. So I mentioned this example that also another example I may add that when the Algerian uprising or revolution or insurgent starts in 54 first thing the North Koreans mention about this but the Algerian Communist Party said about the matter. Now, first of all, this is what Pravda quoted also. Second problem is the Algerian Communist Party was not involved in the uprising, but who cares? For the North Korean logic, the Algerian Communist Party is the authoritative stores. The fact that it was actually started by the front of national liberation which made their own announcement that no, this is not quoted, this is not important. So you can see from these examples that when North Korea starts to make an opinion about these things in many ways it is reflecting what the other communist countries, the role models or others say about it. And the way they diverge, it's often a bit like conservative way. I'm less interested or I'm kind of more aggressive radical. Like for example, when Morocco is being decolonized and getting its independence in 1956, March 56, you can see the start of the process in 55 when the French allowed the Sultan Mohammed V to return from exile. Then the East German Party newspaper publishes like 10 or more articles about it. That's a very great important event. North Koreans don't match. But if you, the ruler doesn't important, not important. So you can really feel this kind of seeing that when the North Koreans make an opinion about these countries it is often a sort of like reproduced opinion but also a very selective one. To mention one more example, I mentioned Algeria, I mentioned Tunisia now, Morocco now. Let's mention a Tunisian example which is probably even more interesting. It also shows that how difficult the dilemmas North Korea sometimes had to face when looking at these countries. So in 57 Tunisia gets into conflict with the French or the sort of border incidents and then to try to find some counterweight against French pressure, they ask for some military equipment from the United States which of course makes the French extremely angry at why the bloody Americans spoke their nose into our private business. It's of course an independent country Tunisia but for the French it's still part of our empire in this mentality why the Americans would intervene. It's been 20 minutes. Okay. So I could totally like miscalculated. So the point is when it happens that Tunisians do something which is really not fitting into the model like they have a quarrel with Nasser or Vigy. They have a conflict with like for example the FLN. Then the North Korea totally go into silent mode. When there is a territorial dispute between Morocco and Mauritania again the North Koreans go into totally silent mode which is very different from say the East Germans who would mention that there is a problem and then they either try to take a stand or they kind of bit evasive but they do mention. The North Koreans usually have this kind of logic that okay if it's somehow not fitting into our worldview then it doesn't exist. And so the final example I would like to say to wrap up my presentation which is very telling in many way because even in terms of theoretical matters it's an important example. How North Korea is writing about these countries and how much their own singing is also a reproduction of something else. So what I saw thanks to friends who found it for me in the North Korea and great choice on Encyclopedia if you look up their entries about say Morocco or Algeria they also have a section about describing the history of these countries. According to the North Korean version of history the history of Morocco started with the French and Spanish incursions into the country. The fact that there was something else before it's not mentioned, not important. Now it's a kind of unbelievable insight to Morocco you know because they were very proud that they were independent even from the Ottoman Empire but it's not a feudal tribe or whatever, not important. But, and this is the final twist to the story this is precisely what you find in the East European newspapers starting like around 46, 47, 1950 when they write about Korea. Well, history of Korea started with Japanese colonization. Japanese colonizer who gets like two sentences or one, maybe two if we are generous then okay the Soviets liberated the country very well. Now this is the important point. If Korea had anything else to do we don't know from the newspaper because it's not important. So now North Korea is kind of repaying the favor you know the poor colonized country. Okay, your history starts with the French. Okay, so here I've finished it and thanks a lot. Okay, so thank you very much for that presentation. It's impossible for me to follow with the PowerPoint so the PowerPoint was complete mess. Next time please just bark orders at me, treat me like a running boy and I will quite happily, yeah. I will be a running dog for your presentation. Was that? Running cat, yes. Balazs is a massive cat lover so he doesn't like any dog metaphors. Dog-a-log, not a cat-a-log, right? Oh yes. So the man on the left is also a crazy cat lover. How many cats do you have, John? I have 27. You had at home? Well, I had a sort of two-way garden. He's like the male version of the crazy cat woman from The Simpsons, isn't it? So John Everard, former ambassador to North Korea's DPRK former British ambassador to DPRK rather than the North Korean ambassador to Britain, right? Yeah, I just want to make sure that's correct. Now an independent scholar man about town expert on all things North Korean. It will be Balazs's Discussant. I'll give you 10 minutes. Thank you. Many thanks. That was a fine presentation. Full disclosure, I have long been a great admirer of Balazs's work but those who haven't come across him before Balazs has done everybody in the Korean studies field a huge service by making available the fascinating correspondence of the Hungarian embassy in Pyongyang over many years available to a much wider audience. If you haven't read this material, I do commend it to you. It's an extraordinary insight into the way that North Korea actually worked at the time. So I claim no objectivity. When I was asked to be the Discussant for this session I was expecting an excellent paper. And sure enough, we got one as Balazs put it out at the beginning. You know there's no reason about this before. He's rather like one of these early explorers wandering through a jungle working out what is going on. I thought the result was really quite intriguing. I think the paper is an important contribution to the history of writing. And it's a right. But also I was intrigued by the analysis of the different pressures under which North Korean foreign policy works. You'll notice that extensive references there to the sequencing of articles in probably mentioned Balazs, Noys Deutschland and then Rodmus Jürgen. And you do get the sense that we had the policy making elite in Pyongyang, so looking at this map of the world and countries that they were never going to visit of whose cultures they had only the sketchiest draft but they knew that they were somehow critically important but they were looking for a lead and were trying to work out whose lead to follow you know China's, the Soviet Union's and so on. And so you get this series of articles about the demarcation in its different constellations. And I thought that the shifts in the policy focus that Balazs brought out in his paper were really quite fascinating. Could I incidentally at this point also commend the paper's methodology? The subject that Balazs has treated here is not just pretty much vert-interagery but also quite a difficult subject to tackle. Where do you start if you're trying to analyse North Korean policy to an area well on the periphery of North Korean foreign policy concerns some years ago? And I thought that the very careful, very methodological very, very methodological rather approach the Balazs talk of charting the articles sequencing them, articles as he pointed out that appeared even when North Korea was actually fighting for its very existence which there's nothing about North Korean priorities enables you to not only see the points that the peak points as it were of when North Korea spoke on these countries but also, and this is a point I'm always trying to make to North Korean, to use the North Korea it brings out the silences. When North Korea speaks of course you listen when it doesn't speak you also need to listen and Balazs's chart does that admirably as I say I commend that methodology. I think that the if I can go so slightly off piece here I'd be fascinated to know what the mirror study would look like if you went through the the FLN journals at the time thank you before I knock it over or the Tunisian sort of near state journals how many times they would refer to North Korea in the same way as Balazs have done for Robert Sinman looking at these countries I have a hunch that the answer would be a very low number that North Korea was important to these countries at certain momentaries I saw flashed up there the relationship between Borgiba and Kim Il-sung for example but most of the time that we'd be studying here frankly most of these countries didn't care what North Korea thought probably didn't really know where North Korea is so what you've got is the North Korean policy elite dancing this exquisite diplomatic minuet trying to work out what their position is following different leads from different countries which didn't actually intersect with reality at all for quite long periods pure abstract diplomacy and a fascinating example of the kind of mismatch between North Korea's actual importance in the world and its perceived, its self-perceived importance it assists in these matters in acting as if it were a bit of power you know Greek statements about countries that are a long way away was actually nobody much is listening it's really just the North Koreans talking to themselves in conclusion I think about another time all good soap operas leave their audience hungry for more you all know more don't you and don't talk about what it's okay for anybody out there looking for a PhD subject and I can count the number of times that anxious students are coming to me saying everything's being written about sways of Bertine Territory what happened after the period the biologist described you could take it forward into into 1990s I have to say I have a particular interest in this question because sitting in Pyongyang I did for some time I got quite friendly with the representatives of some of these countries the Syrians and the Libyans the Libyans incidentally they may have a completely crazy regime they do make great coffee and at that stage they were complained to me that they were getting no attention at all anymore from North Koreans I got quite good access to the North Korean apparatus of the British Ambassador I could get a minister from Tramstein an advice minister often and if I wanted just to go and call on routing business a director in a North Korean department without too much trouble at all if they got ahead of section they were happy and most of the times the North Koreans just wouldn't answer the phone at all so somewhere between the kind of high points that Barrett has outlined in his paper and in 2007 when I was there we witnessed a great decline in this relationship it would be fascinating if anyone was taking the challenge to map out the course of that decline thank you how many minutes do we have five, ten we've got ten minutes so the floor is now open wave your hands wildly and I will happily does anyone have any questions very short comment I would like to end up just curious because we have this image North Korea does a sponsor of terrorism and we have this image of course Islamist terrorism being talented now in early 1990s Algeria had a military dictatorship fighting against Islamist terrorism what is your guess what was North Korean position in that matter guess proof the insurgency they were training the Algerian special forces and they were doing the exact same period when Iran was breaking diplomatic relationship no, the Algeria was breaking diplomatic relationship with Iran because the Iranians were sympathetic to the Islamist so basically North Korea is going to Iran on the Algerian matter and basically supporting the military dictatorship to suppress the insurgency the story they have to be told actually it was told because French language memoirs by Algerian were very nice very interesting oh, please yeah, thank you very much for the fascinating presentation I really enjoyed I think I remember reading somewhere either in the footnote or a part of Pyongyang Times that North Korea even invited this Algerian FLN fighters to Pyongyang in the 1950s or the early 1960s to train their revolutionary ideology have you ever like seen any kind of articles that North Korea invited not Algerians but Moroccans or Tunisians or other countries in Africa or already in the mid-1950s this is very alarming but they had an airplane delegation coming in 1960 and they had the student delegation in 1957 no delegation from Tunisia or Morocco actually not needed for that because they had this really serious conflict with the French earlier so this is kind of very unlikely what they did too much later was when there is the police or insurgents in western Sahara and they probably gave some sort of assistance to the guerrillas there which is a bit difficult to trace because if they give an assistance directly to the Algerians it may still end up with police area sometimes it's bit difficult to figure out but in that early period most probably not even the Chinese in Vietnam were kind of like very cautious on this matter the Algerians are complaining that not from them how much they would prepare so I very much thought so I have just one more question please yeah and like my additional questions is do you think whether this period of North Korean communication or North Korean interest in Morocco is related to its further extension from my relations with Guinea in 59 and Nali also in 59 do you think this somehow related to this to Franco-Pon countries or it's something relevant I would rather say that it's more it was an initiative from the other side because second two rates are very radically there there is this referendum and Guinea is the only country not accepting that French community so after it has really strong break with the goal then is reaching out the communist countries and North Korea is on the list and I think it's more because of its readiness to make a relationship with North Korea than North Korea would diplomatic ability I don't think it's a Franco-Pon thing it's more like second two rates being like excessively radical by post-colonial standards that he's willing to do that but it's true that also Mali established diplomatic relationship with North Korea in 1960 so he also happened to be Franco-Pon so I think that to some extent these countries were influenced by the Algerian example this is probably true but still I fear that North Korea is just on the list usually they when they established diplomatic relationship with North Korea they are also willing to do it with Vietnam and especially with the PRC so a very interesting example is Algeria in the sense that they reverse the fact that you've seen many other countries that they are kind of deliberately neglecting East Germany and favor North Korea because North Korea recognized that but the Black East Germans did not so in this case you can see some connection but otherwise singling out North Korea is not happening in that period yet this is what important to emphasize that in certain countries we have this logic that first there are communist countries in general but we in communist countries there are divided countries and there are no divided countries now because of it you need a superpower we must have some relationship with it smaller countries are not necessary important we can ignore them if we still want to have a relationship better to do it with the Czechs the Poles the Greeks and Romanians the tricky thing is with the divided ones like Germany, Vietnam, Korea Mongolia is all tricky because of the Chinese or Taiwan is playing to them so we make distinction that we have an ambassadorial relationship with the four countries with the divided countries so we are going lower and lower and then sometimes we even make a hierarchy between the divided ones and okay China is only big Taiwan is small we can favor Taiwan but if it's Vietnam and Korea and Germany like a bit handsome we have time for one more question I'm just not so much about Taiwan because what we saw is if you look at the church the Korean area we did not have the ability to get intelligence about intelligence in a broad sense about smaller countries almost Koreans in most cases when they were reporting about everything outside a small number of countries especially what you described they just looked at the second China in Soviet Union maybe in Germany and Poland so I see it's probably it will be interesting to check other sort of regions of the secondary importance and the strongest aspect we will see in the same region okay the final part of our schedule is closing remarks and wrap up so Owen if you'd like to deliver a 15-20 minute oration on a topic of your choice okay yeah right the secret of that is that there is no wrap up or closing remarks I think I should just say unless Professor Lankov wants to come and make sort of extended remarks of any kind I think I can just say thank you very much to our speakers who came from far away and middle distance and some very much closer and to our discussants also who I think all did an excellent job and really showed that they engaged deeply with the papers and I think added a lot actually because this kind of dialogue between people is what makes something like this actually a valuable occasion rather than just people telling you what they've been researching for the last few years which is of course valuable as well and thank you of course to everyone here for coming and sticking it out as well and this is quite a long day inside a basement at SOAS it's good thing it's not a nice day outside isn't it because we're quite happy to be down here in the cosy Kali Li Theatre anyway thank you very much to everyone for coming and hope to see you in the future at future Centre of Korean Studies events. Thank you