Do North Koreans Suffer in Poland (analysis and pictures)?

Even under U.N. sanctions, North Korea has a good number of sources of hard currency- one of them being exporting contract workers to various countries for wages which are then largely taken from them by the government back home. This has been happening for a number of years; North Korean workers are to be found in, among others, Iraq, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, not to mention the thousands who work in Russia’s Far East and Mongolia. Some of them (around 500) are in Poland, more precisely in Warsaw, in the area of Wilanow, a cosy place in the south of the Polish main city.

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New article related to relations between Poland and North Korea

You may download one of my latest article related to the sensitive topic of relations between Poland and North Korea. You may check it there or here.

Kim Pyong Il, the DPRK ambassador to Poland and the uncle of Kim Jong Eun leaves Poland for the Czech Republic

According to the Korean Times, “The half-brother of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was recently appointed Pyongyang’s top envoy to the Czech Republic after serving 17 years as ambassador to Poland, a South Korean government official said Wednesday.

La soeur de Kim Jong-eun s’est elle mariée ?

KimYo-jong, une sœur de Kim Jong-eun employée au sein du PTC, se serait mariée en janvier 2015  à Choe Son (ou Choe sun, selon les ortographes pratiqués), le second fils de Choe Ryong-hae (l’ancien directeur du Bureau Politique de l’APC).

Symposium related to North and South Korea – Call for Papers

The Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences, The Department of Asian Cultures is pleased to announce the following Symposium:

The Korean Peninsula in a global context. Opportunities and challenges in the 21st century.

The rising position of the Korean Peninsula in a global context is a challenge for researchers. This seminar is a one-day event featuring panel discussions of scholars engaged in research policy on the Korean Peninsula. We will especially focus on the modern Korean Peninsula after 1945. Topics related to both Koreas are welcomed. The seminar will cover political, economical and cultural issues.

Proposals for roundtable discussions on the above topics are also welcome. We welcome submission of research papers related and not limited to the previous mentioned topics. We kindly invite you to prepare and submit your abstract/proposal in a Word format. After the event, selected texts related to the Symposium topic may be published in Acta Asiatica Varsoviensia, www.iksio.pan.pl/aav

We kindly invite you to prepare your abstracts and send it to Nicolas Levi – nicolas.levi@iksio.pan.pl or acta.asiatica@iksio.pan.pl.

Date of the event: 10th March 2015

Venue: Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures (Polish Academy of Sciences),

Address: 72, Nowy Świat, 00-330 Warsaw – Poland, Room no. 312.

Deadline for the submission of abstracts: January 31, 2015

Deadline for the submission of articles: March 10, 2015

Registration contact: nicolas.levi@iksio.pan.pl or acta.asiatica@iksio.pan.pl

Who is the former CEO of the North Korean Central Bank?

The son of former North Korean foreign minister Paek Nam-sun, who died in 2007, is the former president of the North Korea’s Central Bank. He was replaced in April by Kim Chon Gyun. Paek Ryong-chon (born in 1952), WAs the  “president of the Central Bank” since 2011. Paek Ryong-chon was 3 times in South Korea (in 2002, 2006 and 2007) where he was travelling with Jang Sung Thaek in 2002.

His father Paek Nam-sun was the DPRK foreign minister from 1998 to 2007. Before being a minister he was the DPRK ambassador to Poland.

Paek Ryong-chon is belonging to the former guard of the top DPRK leadership. Being a son of a proeminent friend of Kim Il Sung, he’s rather safe in the DPRK leadership in spite of loosing his position as the CEO of the Central Bank of the DPRK. Recently he was seen with Yang Hyong-sop during an official meeting o f the DPRK leadership. One of the ally of Paek Ryong-chon is the former deputy prime minister Jon Sung Hun. Both of them lost their positions in April 2014.

Paek Ryong-chon is circled in green in the below picture.

 

Paek Ryong-chon is circled in red in the below pictures.