North fights isolation with delegations to Brazil, Kenya and Mongolia

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attends a Military Foundation Day event in Pyongyang on Feb. 9, 2024. [YONHAP]

North Korea has recently sent delegations to South America, Africa and Mongolia in a move that is seen as a response to its growing diplomatic isolation and economic struggles.

A North Korean delegation returned from Brazil on Saturday, and another delegation returned to Pyongyang from Kenya last week. On Saturday, a separate diplomatic team was sent to Mongolia.

North Korea’s dispatching of delegations to faraway countries is in line with the regime’s recent attempts to expand its reach.

“A delegation of the General Federation of Trade Unions of Korea led by Park In-chol, chairman of its Central Committee, returned home by air on Saturday after taking part in the regular meeting of the Presidential Council of the World Federation of Trade Unions held in Sao Paulo City of Brazil,” the state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Sunday.

The delegation led by Park departed from Pyongyang on Feb. 26 and returned two weeks later.

Flying to South America from the Korean Peninsula takes a long time, and the North Korean delegation’s route was presumably complicated by sanctions and a shortage of aviation fuel.

Typically, North Korean overseas trips involve taking the state-owned flag carrier Air Koryo to China and transferring to a commercial aircraft.

Air Koryo’s regular Pyongyang-Beijing route resumed after a three-year halt due to the Covid-19 pandemic in August last year.

“A delegation of the DPRK led by Minister of Land and Environment Protection Kim Kyong-jun returned home by plane on March 5 after participating in the 6th UN Environment Assembly held in Nairobi of Kenya,” KCNA also reported on March 6.

DPRK stands for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

North Korea is evidently trying to emphasize that it is actively engaged in diplomatic activities by sending these delegations to remote countries in South America and Africa.

The regime is even attending regular multilateral events that do not address urgent issues concerning North Korea or involve important bilateral meetings.

Before COVID-19, North Korea carried out diplomacy with anti-American or anti-Western countries, but recently, it has been focusing on strengthening relationships with existing allies and with countries with which the regime had little interaction.

This series of actions by North Korea is seen as an aftereffect of the surprise establishment of diplomatic ties between South Korea and Cuba — a traditional ally of the North — on Feb. 14.

Cuba's establishment of relations with South Korea likely shocked the Kim Jong-un regime.

From the end of last year to last month, North Korea appeared to focus on making money at the cost of managing its diplomatic relations, closing nine embassies around the world, including in Guinea, Nepal and Bangladesh.

However, since the middle of last month, when diplomatic relations between South Korea and Cuba were established, news of the closure of North Korean embassies has become less frequent, and communication with Western countries has been strengthened as countries such as Germany and Poland prepare to reopen their embassies in Pyongyang.

Additionally, North Korea recently approved the appointment of Joe Colombano, an Italian diplomat, as the United Nations resident coordinator in the DPRK. Colombano has not yet entered North Korea.

Meanwhile, the KCNA reported Sunday that a North Korean Foreign Ministry delegation departed for Mongolia — another traditional ally — on Saturday.

Some worry that the delegation may be trying to send workers overseas to Mongolia, which is prohibited under UN Security Council resolutions. North Korea continued to send workers to Mongolia to earn foreign currency until the regime sealed its borders in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

BY PARK HYUN-JU, LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]