Tycho van der Hoog in webinar on the links between North Korea and Southern Africa

ASCL PhD candidate Tycho van der Hoog contributed to the webinar series 'North Korea in the World', organised by the (US) National Committee on North Korea and the East-West Center in Washington on 25 August 2021. 

In his talk, entitled 'A Monumental Relationship: North Korea and Southern Africa' Van der Hoog said that when North Korea started to establish relationships with African countries in the 1960s, it made efforts to spread the Juche idea of President Kim Il-sung. However, there is not much evidence that African countries that were engaged in liberation movements at the time actually chose North Korea because of their ideological starting point, he explained. Those countries believed they had a real need for weapons and training, and for that reason they started a new relationship with North Korea. After the great famine of the 1990s, when North Korea's economy collapsed to the point where it could not even afford the operating expenses of embassies in Africa, it started to regard Africa as a major foreign currency earning base.

Watch the video of the webinar: