Odd couple: The royal and the
Red By Bertil Lintner
BANGKOK - North Korean Premier Kim Yong-il
is scheduled to pay a four-day visit to Cambodia
in early November, underscoring the curious close
relationship between one of the world's last
communist dictatorships and one of Asia's most
ancient monarchies.
Kim Yong-il, who
should not be confused with the North Korean
supremo, "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il or any of his
relatives, will hold talks with Cambodia's retired
king Norodom Sihanouk, the Cambodian Foreign
Ministry said in a statement posted on its
website.
The North
Korean premier will also hold "official talks"
with his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen, and "pay
courtesy calls" on Senate president Chea Sim, and
the president of the National Assembly, Heng
Samrin, according to the statement.
Cambodia has long served as a link between
North Korea and Southeast Asia and beyond, so it
is plausible to assume that trade and related
issues will be on the agenda. For years the two
countries ran a joint shipping company, and before
the China-led six party talks, Cambodia had
offered to mediate over Pyongyang's contentious
nuclear program.
Kim Yong-il's visit to
Cambodia is not the first by a North Korean
dignitary in recent years. Kim Yong-nam, president
of North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament, the
Supreme People's Assembly, also visited the
country in 2001 at the invitation of Sihanouk, who
had then not yet abdicated in favor of his son,
Norodom Sihamoni, the current serving monarch.
Kim Yong-nam now functions as de facto
head of state, as Kim Jong-il's father, "Great
Leader" Kim Il-sung was elevated to the position
of "eternal president" before his death in 1994,
making North Korea not a monarchy, but rather the
world's only necrocracy.
As incongruous as
it may seem, Cambodia is North Korea's oldest ally
in Southeast Asia. It all began when Sihanouk met
Kim Il-sung in 1961 at a Non-Aligned Movement
meeting in Belgrade and a personal friendship
developed between the two leaders. When Sihanouk
was ousted in a coup in 1970, Kim Il-sung not only
offered him sanctuary in North Korea but also had
a new home built for him about an hour's drive
north of Pyongyang.
A battalion of North
Korean troops worked full-time on it for almost a
year, and when it was finished, only specially
selected guards were allowed anywhere near the
60-room palatial residence. Overlooking the scenic
Chhang Sou On Lake and surrounded by mountains,
the Korean-style building even had its own indoor
movie theater. Like the Great Leader's son, Kim
Jong-il, Sihanouk loves movies.
Sihanouk
has both directed and acted in his own romantic
feature movies and a few more were made in North
Korea, with Cambodian actors strutting their stuff
against the backdrop of Korea's snow-capped
mountains.
French wines and gourmet food
were flown in via China, and Sihanouk and his
entourage were treated as royals would have been
in any country that respects monarchy - as North
Korea evidently does.
By contrast, North
Korea has maintained less cordial relations with
neighboring communist Vietnam, which still exerts
behind-the-scenes pressure on Cambodia. Kim
Yong-il will nonetheless also visit Hanoi during
his diplomatic tour of Southeast Asia.
Throughout the Vietnamese occupation of
Cambodia, North Korea refused to recognize the
regime that Hanoi installed in Phnom Penh in
January 1979 - and that despite immense pressure
at the time put on Pyongyang from Moscow. During a
meeting between Kim Il-sung and Sihanouk seven
years later on April 10, 1986, in Pyongyang, the
Great Leader reassured the then prince that North
Korea would continue to regard him as Cambodia's
legitimate head of state.
When Sihanouk
returned to Phnom Penh in September 1993, after
United Nations-led mediation to end Cambodia's
civil conflict, he arrived with 35 North Korean
bodyguards, commanded by a general from Kim
Il-sung's presidential guards. They are still
there, now guarding Sihanouk as well as the new
king, Sihanomi, who is not as close to North Korea
as his father, but has paid at least one visit to
Pyongyang.
Sailing
buddies Sihanouk and the Cambodian royals
showed their gratitude to the North Koreans when
in the late 1990s they set up a privately-owned
shipping registry, the Cambodia Shipping
Corporation (CSC). The flag of convenience was
used by the North Koreans, and it enjoyed royal
protection as it was headed by Khek Vandy, the
husband of Sihanouk's eldest daughter, Boupha
Devi.
CSC was also partly owned by a Phnom
Penh-based North Korean diplomat and for a few
years aggressively marketed itself as a cheap and
efficient "flag of convenience" service for
international shippers. A series of embarrassing
maritime incidents, including the interception in
June 2002 of a Cambodian-registered - though not
North Korean owned - ship by the French navy, in a
joint operation with US, Greek and Spanish
authorities, of a massive haul of cocaine off the
West African coast prompted Hun Sen's government
to cancel CSC's concession and reportedly give it
to a South Korean company, the Cosmos Group.
At the time, International Transport
Federation general secretary David Cockroft told
the Cambodia-based fortnightly newspaper the Phnom
Penh Post that "they'll need to be able to walk on
water, because nothing short of a miracle will
clean up the name of Cambodian shipping". Indeed,
little appeared to change, including North Korea's
use of Cambodia's flag of convenience for
controversial shipments.
In December 2002,
a Cambodian-registered, North Korean-owned ship
named So San was intercepted by Spanish marines,
working on a US tip, in the Arabian Sea. It was
found to be carrying 15 Scud-type missiles, 15
conventional warheads, 23 tanks of nitric acid
rocket propellant and 85 drums of unidentified
chemicals under a cargo of cement bags.
The destination of the weaponry was said
to be Yemen, and following protests from both
Yemen and North Korea - and intervention by the
US, which apparently did not want to antagonize
Yemen, a supposed ally in Washington's "war on
terror" - the ship was allowed to continue to
Yemen. Later revelations indicated that the cargo
was ultimately delivered to Libya, which caused
considerable embarrassment in Washington.
Premier Kim Yong-il is likely to be quite
familiar with the CSC, as he served as minister
for land and marine transport from 1994 until the
Supreme People's Assembly appointed him to the
premiership in April this year. But since the
scandal-ridden CSC was reorganized five years ago,
Cambodia's economic importance to Pyongyang would
appear to have waned, and North Korea's only known
activity in the country today is in the restaurant
business, including eateries in Phnom Penh and
Siem Reap.
Yet as a diplomatic link to the
wider region, Cambodia is still important to North
Korea. In April 2003, the Cambodian government, at
the urging of Sihanouk, had plans to send an envoy
to Pyongyang in a bid to persuade the North Korean
leadership to be more flexible about talks on its
nuclear program, which at that time had stalled.
The mission never materialized, but North
Korea no doubt remembers that its trusted ally
Cambodia tried first to mediate - and that Phnom
Penh in future could still serve as a gateway for
improved contacts with the outside world. It
remains to be seen what message Kim Yong-il will
bring to Phnom Penh, but it is reasonable to
assume that his visit will, despite the official
announcements, be confined merely to "courtesy
calls" and royal audiences.
Bertil
Lintner is a former correspondent with the Far
Eastern Economic Review and the author of
Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North
Korea under the Kim Clan. He is currently a
writer with Asia-Pacific Media Services.
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