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May 13, 2010

Can you say, “kokiri kalbi?”

This is the cutest picture I could find. Two baby elephants intended as a gift to North Korea are unlikely to survive the journey by air, Zimbabwean conservationists said Thursday. The independent Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said the 18-month-old elephants were being held in pens in the western Hwange National Park, along with pairs of most of the park’s other animal species bound for North Korea. The country is a longtime ally of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. [L.A. Times] As...

Categories Africa/WTF?
February 23, 2010

South Africa Intercepts North Korean Arms Shipment (Updated)

Not for the first time, North Korea is implicated in shipping weapons to one or more belligerents in the civil war in Congo, and not for the first time, North Korea is caught selling tank parts to a warring African nation in violation of a U.N. resolution. This time, however, the North Korean shipment has been seized in the course of what “Western diplomats” call a “clear-cut violation” of UNSCR 1874 (full text in my sidebars): South Africa has told...

Categories Africa/Sanctions
January 27, 2010

North Korean Defects from Embassy in Ethiopia

Yonhap and AFP are both reporting that a 40 year-old North Korean “medic” at the embassy in Addis Ababa defected to South Korea last October. The man is now safely in Seoul. Yonhap said the communist state’s embassy protested strongly, making a threatening call to the South Korean mission. President Bush removed North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on October 11, 2008. Discuss among yourselves. North Korean officials used cars to stage protests outside the building...

Categories Africa/Defectors/Sanctions
May 28, 2009

Memories of an African Student Forced to Study in North Korea During the 1980s

Aliou Niane was born in Guinea West Africa, but due to decisions he had no control over, he found himself in North Korea from 1982-87. He is currently writing his memoir in French about the years he spent there and generously agreed to an email interview. Niane’s story is interesting, if not for the insider’s look he can give into what life was like for a foreigner living in North Korea during the 1980s, but also for the information he...

Categories Africa/Inside NK
May 13, 2009

Robert Mugabe Hearts Kim Jong Il’s Missile

[Updated below.] I remember the Zimbabwe of July 1990 as a slightly behind-the-times but functioning country that managed to fix the roads, get the kids to school, grow and export food, and run some very good national parks … and little else.  What a difference 19 years of despotic oligarchy can make.  Today, North Korea’s number two, Kim Yong Nam, is in Harare as a guest of Robert Mugabe.  And how else should the leaders of two nations they have...

Categories Africa/Geopolitics