Corée du Nord : vers une réouverture du pays ? • RFI

Timothée, hello. Yes, hello Juan, hello to all your other collaborators and RFI listeners. You are in Lomé, in Togo, we are listening to you. Yes, here is my question. Swedish diplomats are the first Western representatives to return to North Korea four years after the country's closure due to the COVID pandemic. Why was Sweden the first Western country to send back its diplomats? I learned something by reading your question. I didn't know that Sweden was the first Western country to be allowed to send back its diplomats to Pyongyang. Carlotta Morteo, why this decision? First of all, it is undoubtedly the sign that the North Korean regime wishes to gradually reopen its borders after four years of closure due to the COVID pandemic. This is the first point. That's why we saw UN representatives visiting this summer. Tourism agencies are preparing, including a Swedish one, since one of the main tour operators is Swedish, a tour operator who goes to North Korea. We must remember that Sweden is the first Western country to open an embassy in North Korea. It dates back to 1973. Sweden was the only country in the EU to have a permanent representative in Pyongyang until 2001. The Swedish embassy plays a role of protective power. That's how we say it in diplomatic jargon. It serves as an intermediary, a messenger between Pyongyang and countries that do not have an open communication channel with North Korea. In this case, the United States, Australia, Canada, the Nordic countries, but also Spain and Italy. So it is Sweden that represents their interests in North Korea and that protects their outsiders. Is it its historical status of a neutral country that made Sweden one of the rare European countries with which North Korea can finally maintain itself? Yes, it was the foundation of its foreign policy for a long time, its diplomatic neutrality, its desire to be a mediator in conflicts, its ambition to be a humanitarian power. Sweden has become a member of NATO. It can no longer claim to be non-aligned. However, the history between Stockholm and Pyongyang is long, since Sweden, at the end of the Korean War in 1953, was one of the four countries, with Switzerland, Poland and Czechoslovakia, who were in charge of supervising the armistice treaty and the demilitarized zone between the north and south of the peninsula. This commission, this pacification mechanism, was an unfortunate failure. Unfortunately, very soon, the two Koreas will be rearmed. We know their relationship today. However, Sweden has never abandoned its position, if I may say so, since, for more than 70 years, it continues to send emissaries, soldiers, who ensure, good or bad, a permanent presence in Korea, even if they have apparently lost contact with the North Korean regime in recent years. What makes Carlotta Morteo that, in the 1970s, Sweden and North Korea will establish diplomatic relations, open an embassy in their respective countries, while we are still, we must remember, in the middle of the Cold War? Well, precisely, Sweden, at the time, wanted to serve as a bridge between the West and the East, and it is with a certain dose of naivety that it will initiate commercial relations with North Korea. And I would like to tell you this somewhat funny story, since it is the first concrete act of diplomatic relations between Sweden and North Korea. It is the purchase by Pyongyang of Swedish equipment, such as drilling machines, sonars, and about 1,000 Volvo cars. It's a bit like the cream of the Swedish industry. It was a fiasco. Yes, it was a fiasco, because Sweden delivered the equipment, but North Korea never paid. And it is probably because the country was much poorer than what the propaganda wanted to make believe. Since then, interests have climbed. As a result, North Korea is now the country with the biggest debt to Sweden. It owes it about 310 million euros. So getting reimbursed is also one of the missions of the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang. No one really believes to see this money again one day. But it seems that we can still cross these beautiful Volvo cars of the 70s in the streets of the North Korean capital.