North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Tycho van der Hoog: North Korea’s forgotten allies in Africa

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

In this episode, Tycho van der Hoog joins the podcast to explore how North Korea forged and sustained ties with African liberation movements and governments during and after the Cold War — connections that continue to shape the country’s activities on the continent today. He shares how his interest in the topic began with a […]

You're listening to an exclusive episode of the NK News podcast, available only to subscribers. You can listen to this and other episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NKNews website at NKNews.org slash private-feed. Hello, listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Chaco's Wedsuit, and today I am interviewing Dr. Tijo von der Ho, who is assistant professor of international security studies at the Netherlands Defense Academy, and also the author of a new book, Comrades Beyond the Cold War, a book that traces North Korea's unexpected ties with post-colonial states in Southern Africa. And we'll be talking about that book through the lens of which he explores North Korea's foreign policy, ideology, and influence far beyond the Korean Peninsula. Ticho, welcome on the show.

Thank you very much for having me. Now, I know this book came out of your PhD thesis, and so we've been talking, well, we've known each other for a few years, and so this was always going to, happen and now the book is out so now we can do it i'm very happy to be here i remember when we last met i think was three years ago we had a i tried to bribe you with an iced coffee to to join the podcast and uh well i needed not a few years to finish the book but finally we have the opportunity uh to have this discussion exactly exactly and congratulations on uh publishing the book it's a great book i've read it over the weekend yes let's get into it now see how most people they think of North Korea as an isolated, inward-looking place that's sort of cut off from the world.

But the introduction of your book very early on, you take us to Namibia in southwest Africa in 2012 with a busload of North Korean workers arriving to build a museum that commemorates the history of Namibia's liberation struggle, one that is still, it's a memorial that's still fiercely protected by local politicians. So what on earth is it doing here? What does it say about North Korea's global reach during and after the Cold War? Well, this is actually the question that I asked myself when I first encountered that monument.

And I have to confess, Yako, I have a background in African studies, not in Korean studies. So I spent most of my time traveling through Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, in search of African history. So you can imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this grand nationalist heritage slap bang in the center of Vintuk, the capital city of Namibia.

At that time, I only knew North Korea from media consumption. So I figured North Korea was this isolated rogue nation led by a chubby dictator with a weird haircut. And I couldn't understand why they would be building monuments in Africa. And not just the exterior, I should say, not just the bricks and mortar of the building. But when you go into that specific monument that you mentioned, this is a museum of national history. And it narrates the struggle for liberation of the Namibian regime, which is in power, Swapo. And the entire exhibition is not designed by Namibian politicians or journalists or historians, but also by the North Koreans.

Wow. So they're telling an African story of liberation through North Korean aesthetics and narratives. And I remember coming back to the Netherlands, finishing on my field work, which was, as I mentioned, on an entirely different topic. I kept thinking about what I had seen, trying to make sense of it. And I figured I probably needed another four years. years of a PhD project to find the question, which is that many of the victorious liberation movements in Africa were dependent on North Korean aid during the struggle for liberation. And today they are repaying this aid through a host of illicit activities such as the

construction of heritage. Right. Now, why was Africa such an important theater for North Korea's foreign policy during the Cold War and afterwards? From the perspective of North Korea, the answer is the United Nations. United Nations from the 1950s onwards became the most important platform for discussions on the future of the Korean Peninsula.

And you can imagine that at the end of the Korean War, most of the United Nations consisted of European or Western states, which predominantly supported South Korea. So North Korea didn't really have anything to gain with engaging with the United Nations. But from the 1960s onwards, Africa started to decolonize. And every other week, it seemed that a new African nation became independent and joined the General Assembly.

So the composition of the General Assembly started to change, which meant that also the discourse on the Korean Peninsula could be altered as well. And North Korea decided to invest very heavily in its African diplomacy, trying to sway these newly independent nations to their side of the aisle. And there's a big difference between the North Korean approach

and the South Korean approach, because North Korea also invested in liberation movements. Trying to get a foothold in the African continent before a country became independent. And once the inevitable happened, which was decolonization, then surely there was a new ally for the DPRK. Yeah, that's very interesting. So North Korea really hoped to gain from its relationships with these newly emerging governments and states in southern Africa and other places, hoped to gain support for its proposals at the United Nations General

Assembly on how to solve the question of the divided Korea. Is that right? That's right. Every year, the United Nations held a vote on what was called the Korean question. And every year, that vote was being won by South Korea up until around 1975, when suddenly the dial started to move towards the direction of the DPRK. And this was largely thanks to the support of African nations. It was interesting that during that whole time there I think up until 1991 both careers only had observer status at the united nations they weren't actually full members because neither of them wanted to enter the united nations as a half state so they were only wanting you know to to enter as the only true career but eventually

ninety one of course both of them were admitted to full membership of the u.n effectively as two competing states of the same territory but yeah that's it's a fascinating history now you see say in your book that the Cold War lens of looking at this through the lens of the Cold War, it's inadequate for understanding the true meaning of African-Asian encounters, including those between these liberation movements in Southern Africa and North Korea. Why is that? That's correct. The main narrative that is understood today is related, as you mentioned, to 1991, when both Koreas gained full membership of the United Nations. And it seems, It seemed that the era of African-Korean interactions was over because there was no need for diplomatic competition.

And in any case, North Korea's economy collapsed, as you know. So there was no money to invest in elaborate cultural, economic, or military diplomacy. And it sort of seemed that Cold War was over, so there was no interest in Africa anymore. My perspective is that examples such as that monument in Namibia that we talked about is an argument for the other side of the debate, which is that actually, beyond the Cold War, these interactions continued to flourish, maybe not as visible and maybe in different ways than we had understood before, but nevertheless, they continued. And my conviction is that many of the governments that are in place in Africa today have very fond memories of the North Korean regime. And they want to continue to cooperate with the DPRK,

despite UN sanctions forbidding them to do so. Right. Did Kim Il-Song see himself as some kind of a leader of the global South, like a Nasser or a Tito? Or was there a different framework at play? play. He wanted to gain a sort of similar position being a leader of what was called the non-aligned movement at the time, which is one of the platforms where North Korean and African states met. There was a different flavor, I think, to the way that North Korea, sorry, that Kimmel-sung presented

itself, which was mainly related to Tutsche. Tutsu ideology really greased the wheels of diplomacy between African revolutionaries and North Korean diplomats. And it allowed Kim Il-sung to present himself differently from the communist bloc, which I think was very important for the success of their diplomacy. Because many African nations didn't see North Korea in a similar vein as the Soviet Union or China. They saw it as a non-aligned ally,

which allowed them to trade with them or negotiate with them in a more free manner. That's great. You've actually, you've already answered my next question about the Soviet Union and China, so we can skip that one. We're going to get back into Juche a little bit later on. But your research shows North Korea establishing relations with both liberation movements when they were largely groups of people in exile,

and then later on with formal governments of either newly emerging states or states in transition. Was this transition from a liberation? movement to a formal government, was that transition smooth? Did Pyongyang adapt well to the shift from revolution to state building? Curious to hear the rest? Become an NK News subscriber today for access to the full episode. Head to nknews.org slash join for more information. If you're already a subscriber to NK News, you can listen to full episodes from your preferred podcast player by accessing the private podcast feed. For more detailed instructions, please see the step-by-step guide on the NKNews website

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