History
North Korea opened a trade office in Peru on January 1975, under the left-wing government of Juan Velasco Alvarado. Relations were officially established at an embassy level on December 15, 1988. [5] [6] [7]
On December 29, 1977, a member of the commercial delegation was expelled from Peru after being involved in contraband activitites. This followed a similar situation developing in October of the same year, when North Korean diplomatic staff were expelled from a number of Scandinavian embassies. [8]
In 1987, the then trade office was bombed by terror group Shining Path. [9] [10] The attack was in response of the North Korean government's support of the Peruvian government against guerrillas during the country's internal conflict, which included the sale of 10,000 AK-47s to be used by the Peruvian National Police. [10] Another attack was attempted in 1989, but the bomb did not detonate as it was defused by the Peruvian Police. [11]
Under Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the embassy was ordered to decrease its diplomatic staff from six to three people. [4] After the North Korean government conducted nuclear tests in September 2017, the Peruvian government responded by declaring the Korean ambassador as a persona non grata on September 11 and gave him five days to leave the country. [3] [12] The Korean ambassador protested the measure before leaving the embassy. [13] [14] Subsequently, the first and third secretaries of the embassy—Pak Myong Chol and Ji Hyok, respectively—were also given the same treatment on December 22. [15] Nevertheless, the embassy continued to function after the incidents. [16]
After the diplomats' expulsion, Argentine newspaper Infobae revealed the reason behind Kuczynski's ultimatum was that both secretaries kept in touch with leaders of the Red Fatherland Party and had reportedly been planning to attack the families of the diplomatic staff of the U.S. Embassy in Lima, even suggesting their assassination. [4] [17] The information had been discovered by law enforcement as part of an investigation against Pak Myong Hol as part of a sexual harassment complaint filed against him on behalf of a boy under 15 years old. [4] [17] The Red Fatherland Party confirmed that they kept in touch with the diplomatic staff, but denied the allegations made against them. [17] [18] Regardless, two days prior to the expulsion of the two diplomats, the U.S. Embassy had issued a security alert to its staff, seemingly connected to the scandal. [19] [20]
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