Murder throws spotlight on North Korea’s activities in SEA
North Korea has worked to enhance commercial ties with Southeast Asian nations over the years, and has had especially good relations with Malaysia, says FT report.
KUALA LUMPUR: The current spat between North Korea and Malaysia over the assassination of Kim Jong Nam brings into focus the relationship between both nations and North Korea’s growing commercial ties with Southeast Asia.
Up till now, Malaysia has enjoyed cordial relations with North Korea, one of the few countries in the world to do so. And Malaysia is the only country in the world to enjoy visa-free travel with North Korea.
According to a report in the Financial Times (FT), as North Korea turned to tourism to raise revenue it chose Kuala Lumpur as the venue for an office to promote travel from Southeast Asia and India.
The report said North Koreans were currently working in the construction and mining industries in Sarawak.
Also, under a barter arrangement, Malaysia has traded palm oil with fertiliser from North Korea.
The trade relationship is growing but at a modest rate. Total trade value was just RM22.7 million in 2015, said the report.
The FT quoted analysts as saying Malaysia’s engagement had been driven by both commercial opportunities and its tradition of nonaligned diplomacy.
Lee Jaehyon, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Asan Institute in Seoul, was quoted by the FT as saying: “In the 1960s and 1970s, North Korea was close with the communist regimes and nonaligned countries in the region. Malaysia has an eye on the economic benefits if North Korea opens up.”
The relationship, however, may change following the murder of Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un.
Jong Nam was apparently murdered by two women while he was waiting to catch a return flight to Macau at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 on Feb 13.
The row started when Malaysia performed an autopsy on the murder victim over objections from Pyongyang and refused to release the body until a family member came forward to provide a DNA sample.
North Korea’s ambassador, Kang Chol, was summoned by Malaysia’s foreign ministry after he charged that the investigation was “politically motivated” and that Malaysia was conspiring with “hostile forces”.
Following the meeting, the ambassador issued a five-page media statement on Monday claiming distrust of the Malaysian government. On Monday, too, Malaysia recalled its envoy to North Korea.
Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said North Korea’s complaints were based on “delusions, lies and half-truths” and that any suggestion that the investigation had a political motive was “deeply insulting to Malaysia”.
It is not certain how the row between Malaysia and North Korea will affect the latter’s growing commercial interests in the region.
According to the FT report, North Korea has a “Pyongyang” restaurant chain in several Southeast Asian nations.
The FT report said Pyongyang had also turned to Southeast Asia in search of ways to evade international sanctions, adding that Singapore-based shipping companies had been accused of facilitating arms shipments to North Korea.
One of these companies, Chinpo Shipping, was fined S$180,000 (RM564,874) last year after being found guilty in a Singapore court of transferring financial assets or resources that could have been used to contribute to North Korea’s weapons programmes, said the FT report.
Apart from Malaysia and Indonesia – which has sought to be a bridge between the two Koreas – other countries have not pushed the relationship with Pyongyang as strongly, the report said.
In Cambodia, North Korea’s Mansudae art studio has built a museum dedicated to Angkor Wat.
The Myanmar junta or individuals linked to it, apparently, received weapons from Pyongyang during its years of international semi-isolation before it formally stepped down in 2011.
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The FT report noted that when North Korean officials complained to Myanmar in 2015 about pirated copies of the film The Interview – the Sony Pictures comedy about a plot to assassinate Kim Jong Un – being sold in market stalls, the Myanmar authorities seized the copies.