As of: February 29, 2024, 11:23 a.m
By: Sven Hauberg
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In March 2020, the German embassy in Pyongyang was closed.
A German delegation is now traveling to North Korea for the first time.
What does she want with dictator Kim Jong-un?
For the first time in almost four years, Germany sent a delegation to North Korea.
“A team from the Foreign Office is currently on a technical inspection trip to Pyongyang.
“It is inspecting the German embassy premises over several days,” said a spokesman for the Foreign Office in Berlin on Tuesday when asked.
The specialist portal NK News
first
reported.
The German representation in Pyongyang was closed on March 9, 2020 after dictator Kim Jong-un closed the country's borders at the beginning of the corona pandemic.
The reason given at the time was that North Korea's government did not want to guarantee the "freedom of movement of German diplomats".
It is unclear whether the German embassy in the North Korean capital will resume operations soon.
The current delegation trip “does not represent a preliminary decision on a possible reopening of the embassy,” according to the Foreign Office.
Annalena Baerbock’s ministry currently “strongly” advises against traveling to North Korea.
North Korea and China: “Deepen traditional friendship and practical cooperation”
North Korea is the only country in the world that has still not fully opened up to the outside world after the end of the pandemic.
For more than three years, even North Korean citizens were unable to return to their home country from abroad;
For years, North Koreans have only been able to leave the dictatorially ruled country with a special permit.
Diplomatic contact between the government in Pyongyang and abroad had also largely come to a standstill.
Last March, the new Chinese ambassador in Pyongyang was probably the first foreign diplomat to be allowed back into North Korea.
Today, it is estimated that only around a dozen countries have diplomatic missions in Pyongyang.
North Korea maintains regular diplomatic contact with its large neighbor China, among others.
Most recently, the deputy foreign ministers of both countries met for talks in Pyongyang at the end of January.
Both governments wanted to “deepen traditional friendship and practical cooperation,” Beijing’s foreign office said afterwards.
Use in the Ukraine war: North Korea is supposed to supply weapons and ammunition to Russia
Relations between Pyongyang and Moscow are particularly close.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited North Korea last October, and shortly before that Kim Jong-un traveled to Russia's Far East to meet with Vladimir Putin.
The US and South Korean secret services, among others, believe that North Korea has been supplying Russia with ammunition and ballistic missiles for months that are used in the Ukraine war.
Since September last year, North Korea is said to have sent more than 10,000 containers of ammunition and other material to Russia, the US State Department said at the end of last week.
The fact that “North Korea is exporting ballistic missiles and Russia is procuring them” represents “a direct violation of relevant resolutions” of the UN Security Council, the states of the G7 group said on Saturday on the occasion of the second anniversary of the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
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An earlier version of this text said that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov visited North Korea in April last year. In fact, he traveled to Pyongyang in October. We have corrected the relevant passage.