The Korea Times
North Korea’s diplomats are often seen delivering rigid statements from behind podiums, but a new insider account suggests the real work of Pyongyang’s foreign service happens far from public view. Drafting reports for Kim Jong-un. Navigating turf battles between rival state and party organs. Moving hard currency through overseas embassies under mounting pressure. That is how Han Jin-myung, a former third secretary at North Korea’s embassy in Vietnam who defected in 2014, describes the inner workings of Pyongyang’s foreign policy apparatus, based on a series of conversations with Nicholas Levi, a senior researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Those accounts underpin a new English-language book, “I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang’s Foreign Service,” published independently in late March. It offers a rare inside look at one of the world’s most opaque diplomatic systems, portraying North Korea’s embassies and foreign ministry as instruments of regime survival as much as channel
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