North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, front row center, attends the Ninth Party Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang, Feb. 19, in this photo published by the Korean Central News Agency the following day. Yonhap
North Korea’s diplomats are often seen delivering rigid statements from behind podiums, but a new insider account suggests the real work of Pyongyang’s foreign service happens far from public view.
Drafting reports for Kim Jong-un. Navigating turf battles between rival state and party organs. Moving hard currency through overseas embassies under mounting pressure.
That is how Han Jin-myung, a former third secretary at North Korea’s embassy in Vietnam who defected in 2014, describes the inner workings of Pyongyang’s foreign policy apparatus, based on a series of conversations with Nicholas Levi, a senior researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Those accounts underpin a new English-language book, “I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang’s Foreign Service,” published independently in late March. It offers a rare inside look at one of the world’s most opaque diplomatic systems, portraying North Korea’s embassies and foreign ministry as instruments of regime survival as much as channels of statecraft.
Han joined the Foreign Ministry in 2008 and later served in Vietnam before his defection more than a decade ago. His extensive testimony, while difficult to independently verify in parts, aligns with years of U.N. investigations and reporting that have linked overseas missions of North Korea to both diplomatic and revenue-generating roles.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, front row center, takes a group photo with ambassadors and foreign ministry officials following the two-day Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) session, March 23, in this photo provided by the North's Korean Central News Agency the following day. Yonhap
To outside observers, North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) serves as the public face of the country’s diplomacy, issuing statements, hosting delegations and dispatching envoys abroad.
But Han says that image can be misleading. While the institution appears on paper as a conventional bureaucracy organized by region and function, its outward structure is “essentially a façade,” masking a far more opaque system shaped by political priorities.
In practice, he said, the ministry operates alongside other key institutions — including trade, military and party bodies — that all contribute analysis feeding into Kim Jong-un’s inner circle.
Source: Korea Times News
