Alberto Rubio
North Korean regime has decided to close its Embassy in Madrid, apparently as a cost-saving measure to face economic problems. Until now, the diplomatic mission was headed by a single diplomat, Yun Sok So, with the rank of First Secretary. However, Yun was never appointed Chargé d’Affaires, following the expulsion of the previous ambassador, Kim Hyok-chol, in 2017.
Since then, the Embassy has maintained a very low profile and practically no contact with the Spanish authorities, to the extent that Yun Sok So tried, not without some desperation, to find intermediaries to open channels of dialogue.
His attempts, however, always met with the indifference of the Spanish Foreign Ministry. Yun, who speaks perfect Spanish because in his youth his father was stationed in Peru as a diplomat, even commented that no one answered his calls and that he could not even meet with ‘rank and file’ diplomats from the general directorate in charge of Asian affairs.
With no political relations, no tourist visits and bilateral trade exchanges reduced to two million euros in 2022, the North Korean Embassy in Madrid was doomed to close. Its affairs will be handled from now on, if the Spanish government grants its approval, from the Embassy that the Kim regime will maintain, for the time being, in Italy.
The Diplomat tried yesterday to contact Yun Sok So to know in detail the reasons for the closure, but the North Korean diplomat did not answer the calls. It is unknown whether he still remains in Spain or has left the country with his family.
Yun Sok So was involved on February 22, 2019 in the bizarre assault on the Embassy carried out by a group of 10 people of American and South Korean nationalities, apparently belonging to a dissident North Korean organization. Manhandled for hours, the assailants tried to convince him to desert, something he refused to do, according to what he himself declared in the National Court. Had he done so, it would have been a great victory for the opponents of the regime of ‘Respected Comrade’ Kim Jong Un. After failing to convince him, the assailants took documentation and some computer equipment.
Kim Jong Un’s ambassador in a tie
Kim Hyok-chol, was the only North Korean ambassador to Spain. He opened the Mission in February 2014 (the formal request for opening was in October 2013) in a luxurious villa in the Valdemarín urbanization, within visual distance of the National Intelligence Center (CNI). At that time, the Embassy had four other diplomats under him. From the beginning, the new ambassador distinguished himself for his great activity and for trying to give a more ‘friendly’ and ‘modern’ image of Kim Jong Un’s regime, as Yun Sok So has also tried to do.
Always dressed in an impeccable suit and tie, Kim gave a completely opposite image to that of the uniformed North Korean regime. Nor did he have any problem in granting interviews or organizing official receptions, which were even attended by representatives of the Spanish Administration, as The Diplomat reported at the time.
After entering the United Nations Security Council as a non-permanent member, paradoxically with the vote in favor of North Korea, Spain chaired the 1718 Committee, which was in charge of the international sanctions regime against Pyongyang for its nuclear program.
What at first seemed that it could be a conciliatory presidency capable of redirecting relations with North Korea, turned in 2017 into a bilateral diplomatic clash that sank the incipient opening of the Pyongyang regime towards Europe, where at the same time as in Madrid it had opened Embassies in Berlin and Rome.
North Korea, in defiance of UN resolutions, was at the time accelerating its ballistic and nuclear program and launching test missiles. In response, in August 2017, the Spanish government decided to reduce the diplomatic staff at the Embassy. And only a month later, in the face of the North Korean regime’s insistence on continuing with the ballistic tests, Ambassador Kim Hyok-chol was declared persona non grata and expelled from the country.
Nine years after its opening, the North Korean Embassy in Madrid is now history.
