North Koreans reacted in shock when they learned that their “socialist brethren” in Cuba established official relations with capitalistic South Korea, residents in the North told Radio Free Asia.
Seoul and Havana announced the move on Feb. 14, when their respective representatives to the United Nations in New York sent each other diplomatic notes acknowledging that the two countries would restore formal relations, which were stopped when Fidel Castro and the communists took control of the Caribbean island nation in 1959.
Since 1960, Cuba and North Korea have boasted of their “close brotherly ties.”
But the North Korean government has not yet announced Havana’s move to its citizens.
The news trickled into North Korea from China and is now spreading by word of mouth, shocking all who hear it, a resident of the central northern province of Ryanggang told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
He said he had heard the news several weeks ago from someone who had come from China, and he implied he kept to himself.
(It is common in North Korea for even married couples to not openly discuss potentially sensitive topics because it could be used against them if they ever wind up being interrogated by the authorities).
“A few days ago, my wife heard the news,” he said. “She was really upset and worried about what our country will be like in the future.”
The man said that his wife was worried that North Korea was becoming isolated as more countries that it considers to be its closest allies set up new embassies in Seoul.
North Korean propaganda up until this point praised the story of Cuba, which the resident said had been depicted as steadfast in its fight against imperialism despite being “firmly and directly under the nose” of the United States, referring to the U.S. embargo of the country.
“Who wouldn’t be surprised that such a country has established diplomatic relations with South Korea?” he said.
Some elderly people have fond memories of Castro visiting Pyongyang in 1986 to receive a gift of 100,000 automatic rifles along with tens of millions of rounds of ammunition, and how genuinely thankful he seemed when he discussed the exchange in a public address in a 20,000 seat stadium where he stood alongside then-leader Kim Il Sung, the resident said.
From then, high-level delegations, as well as exchange students, went back and forth between the two countries, he said. “There is even a school named after Kim Il Sung in Cuba. A lot of sugar from Cuba was also brought into North Korea.”
Another source, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong said that he could not believe that Cuba and South Korea established relations, especially because North Korean authorities had harshly criticized Hungary when it became the first Soviet-bloc country to forge ties with Seoul in 1989, announcing the decision at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
The act was strongly denounced in North Korean media as a “betrayal of socialism,” and Pyongyang lowered diplomatic relations with Budapest to just the ambassador level that year.
“It was the same [in 1992] when China and Vietnam each established diplomatic relations with South Korea,” the North Hamgyong resident said. “The authorities openly criticized China for giving up socialist principles for money.”
North Korea was especially angry at Vietnam, he said, as Pyongyang had sent soldiers to fight on the side of communist North Vietnam and many North Koreans had died in the war.
“The graves of the North Korean soldiers in Vietnam were relocated to North Korea,” he said.
The lack of official criticism of Cuba is perplexing, he said. “I think that the authorities are afraid of residents finding out that Cuba, the last socialist bastion in Latin America, has established diplomatic relations with South Korea.”
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong.