5 surprising connections between North Korea and Malaysia… before they unfriended us

[This article was originally published in February 2017 updated on June 29th 2022 following the ironic fate of North Korea’s ex-embassy house]

Malaysia’s super friendly relationship with North Korea had always been a strange badge of pride, kinda like telling people you were friends with that edgy yet enigmatic loner back in college. Unfortunately, that relationship was strained when North Korea launched the Taepodong of blame at Malaysia over the assassination of Kim Jong-nam back in 2017, and later officially cut diplomatic ties with us after our courts allowed a North Korean businessman living in KL to be extradited to the US to face charges for money laundering.

And so, they closed their embassy in Damansara Heights and….wait. When was the last time you’ve seen an embassy out of central KL?

As it turns out, there is an actual reason for the Hermit Kingdom to also have a hermit embassy (in the next point!), and what may be more surprising is that it’s actually a bungalow. So, we’re pretty sure the people behind the promotion of Netflix’s Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area knew exactly what they were doing when they used this house as the site of their heist simulation. And the reason why we think there’s some cheekiness going on here is because the show take place in a reunified Korea.   

So, yea, we weren’t paid to promote the event but it reminded us of this article and the weird

NOTE: This article was originally published in February 2017, we changed the tenses since a lot of these are now gone, but we might have missed a few. Harap faham ye 😘

1. There was a North Korean embassy in Malaysia – hidden in a housing area

This is kinda related to a later point about North Korea’s ambassador to Malaysia, because in order for there to be an ambassador, there needs to be an embassy. Considering how Malaysians were the first to be allowed to travel to North Korea without a visa (along with like, all the points in this article) it can be said that we were tight, brah.

But what’s funny/coincidental about this is that the embassy was located along Jalan Batai in Damansara Heights… in a nondescript bungalow within the neighborhood close to where the original HELP College was (Source: I used to be a student).

While we don’t know what the situation was like here in Malaysia, there have been weird reports about North Korean embassies in other countries. You can check out the full list of countries on their official government website.

One of the weird stories involving these embassies comes out of the UK, which Pyongyang has also set up in a nondescript house in a London neighborhood. Apparently, diplomats are so poorly paid that they were seen buying second-hand office equipment from flea markets, and struggling to pay bills and groceries. This was apparently due to a directive from Pyongyang, which expects all embassies to be self-financing whenever possible.

“When I saw them in the grocers, they didn’t have enough cash for what they wanted. I offered them to lend them some but they said ‘no’. Back in North Korea, we would have to look up to these people, but over here it seems they can’t even afford to eat.” – Kim Joo-il, North Korean defector, as quoted by The Telegraph.

It’s apparently a thing in North Korea for diplomats and/or staff to raise their own funds by using their diplomatic immunity to smuggle all manner of things from drugs to endangered animals, and sending some of this money back to Pyongyang. Officially though, an embassy spokesperson in the UK denies all of these allegations.

If you’re wondering why these embassies are located in housing neighborhoods far from city centres where most embassies are located; it’s for a very simple, no spy stuff related reason – To save money.

2. There were (are?) North Korean laborers in Sarawak

Back in 2014, an explosion in a coal mine in Pantu, Sarawak blew open the news that there were North Korean laborers working in the mines – 46 of them in total. Not just that, they were actually in the country legally! You can read this account by The Borneo Post, who visited the mine last year.

According to the Home Ministry, the workers were brought in by special arrangement with the North Korean government and were only allowed to work in Sarawak due to their skill and willingness to work in dangerous conditions. Coal mines have a tendency to explode despite modern techniques and equipment.

“When it comes to industries such as coal-mines, the jobs are very dangerous and tough. … No local or Sarawakian will dare to take up such jobs; that is why the need for foreign workers. In the coal-mining sector, only Britain, China and North Korea have highly-skilled workers.” – Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar, then-Deputy Home Minister, as quoted by The Star.

Malaysia isn’t the first country to take in North Korean laborers too, since the country has actually been exporting workers to various countries for years – their oldest “customer” being Russia, which has been importing workers since the Cold War. What’s slightly troubling about this scenario is that several sources including the Wall Street Journal claim that the workers live in “slave-like conditions” while a large chunk of their salaries are sent back to North Korean officials.

The Wall Street Journal also claims there were about 300 North Koreans working in Malaysia. Not all of them may be in mines though, because…

3. There was a North Korean restaurant in KL – with real North Koreans!

Somewhere along Jalan Imbi used to lie the Pyongyang Koryo Restaurant which, according to their Facebook page, specializes in bringing the experience of North Korean cuisine to you right in the heart of KL. Food aside, one of the highlights of the restaurant is the music and dance performance by the restaurant’s waitresses (in traditional dress, of course) at regular intervals. You can read some reviews here, or from our editor who tried out the place:

“The food was decent, but what really got our attention were the TVs that showed endless beautiful footage of North Korea. Every 10 minutes or so the waitresses will go up on stage and play songs, which sound strangely MIDI, and with no expressions on their face – like scary Stepford Wives stuff. We also weren’t allowed to take pictures, and they didn’t allow access to any other parts of the building except the toilet.” – Chak, CILISOS editor.

Funny enough, we found another review from China that also made a Stepford Wives reference. If you haven’t watched the movie, it’s about a community of perfect wives who turn out to be robots.

What you may not know is that Pyongyang Koryo is a restaurant chain with more than 100 restaurants around the world. And guess who owns the chain?

According to defectors, the restaurant chain is controlled by Bureau 39, a money-making (and allegedly money laundering) arm of the North Korean government. The restaurants have to make an annual fixed payment back to North Korea, and all workers are aggressively screened for political loyalty before being sent overseas. According to another report, waitresses are trained in intelligence gathering in order to pry secrets from corporate or government customers, and restaurants are used as a base of operation for North Korean spies:

“North Korean agents assigned overseas often use North Korean restaurants to forge their identities and to contact people for secret operations.” – Anonymous Intelligence source, quoted by The Washington Free Beacon.

Despite this though, workers have tried defecting and there was an incident in China where 12 waitresses and their manager defected to South Korea. North Korea claims the workers were kidnapped after they were conned into thinking that they were being transferred to……Malaysia.

Unfortunately the restaurant closed in 2017  so, like many North Koreans, we may never get to enjoy North Korean food. The official reason given was that business was poor, so it’s probably total coincidence that the closure happened 3 months after the assassination of Kim Jong-nam.

4. There were North Korean students in Malaysian universities

Back in 2013 HELP University attracted a fair bit of international controversy when it awarded Kim Jong-un with an honorary doctorate in irony Economics. HELP President Datuk Dr. Paul Chan defended the award in a statement to Foreign Policy, who broke the story. He says that it was a “soft approach” to open the doors to education for North Koreans and make the world a better place. Serious.

The award was presented to North Korea’s ambassador to Malaysia, which is where this point starts getting really morbid.

Back when CILISOS was still a baby, I wrote an article comparing Malaysia to North Korea. A few weeks later, I received an email from a South Korean student studying in HELP telling me about Jang Tae-ryong and his brother, Jang Tae-woong, who were students from North Korea. Their father was Jang Yong-chol – the North Korean ambassador to Malaysia.

You may have heard a mass series of power purges after Kim Jong-un took power, where many older officials were considered a threat to his leadership and executed in extreme ways – including an incident where one official was fed to 100 hungry dogs. While the method cannot be proven, it’s confirmed that the official – the second most powerful man in Pyongyang – was executed, and he was the uncle of Jang Yong-chol.

In the email, the student tells me that Jang Yong-chol and his family was recalled back to Pyongyang, along with Tae-woong’s girlfriend (also a North Korean):

“Tae-ryong was my classmate. I have no Idea what is his brother’s girlfriend’s name. Tae Woong’s girlfriend was very friendly and kind person, she actually cooked a Kimchi fried rice by herself and gave it to me.

I have no idea how is her family background, but she’s definitely disappeared from HELP, and even my friend can’t reach her by any means of communication (even her Insta account was deleted). Mostly North Korean people don’t even want or maybe can’t talk to South Korean People, but she was definitely being kind to me. Also, she was my classmate.

And by the time Kim Jong-un ordered them to return back, I cant see him, his brother, or the brother’s girlfriend anywhere in the University.” – Anonymous HELP student, in email to CILISOS.

Unfortunately, this story has a pretty grim ending, because North Korea practices a system of collective punishment where up to 3 generations of family can be punished for one person’s crime. While we cannot verify our anonymous student’s story, it has been reported in South Korean news (The Star’s report in English here) that:

“Ambassador Jang Yong-cheol of Malaysia and his son Tae-ryeong and Taewoong in the mid 20s were summoned and executed in Pyongyang in early December”

There is no news of what happened to Tae-woong’s girlfriend.

5. There are Proton taxis…. in North Korea????!

If you think Protons are only used as taxis in Malaysia, that picture above proves otherwise. And don’t forget the Waja in the featured image as well. Here’s the video if you wanna see it for yourself (around the 25-second mark).

There isn’t too much legit info about this, but the only source that we found talking about this mentions that around 2002, one of North Korea’s top leaders (and foreign representative) took a tour of the Proton plant in Shah Alam with 30 other officials. Not just that, he apparently discussed the possibility of a joint venture with Proton to set up a manufacturing plant in North Korea.

It seems that Kim Jong-il was interested in the idea of building cars in North Korea at the time, since he also visited a manufacturing plant in Shanghai. However the idea, like many missile tests, probably never took off.

“Building a car in North Korea — they’ve been dreaming of that for a long time … But you put a car plant where people can buy cars, and there’s no way North Koreans can buy cars in any number.” – Bradly Martin, correspondent, as quoted by Bloombeg via Taipei Times.

Malaysian blogger Aero made this really interesting post documenting Proton cars spotted in other countries, and mentions that Proton does not officially sell their cars in North Korea. Weird, huh?

We don’t know if these are still in use today, since there’s no real way of finding out.

Wait, why were Malaysia and North Korea such good friends?

Our two countries started establishing diplomatic relations in 1973. And apparently, this led to diplomatic relations with China because Kim Il-sung decided to play wingman and set up the first date in 1974.

In later years, these ties led to a small level of trade amounting to about RM23 million. On top of that, we’ve also benefited from North Korean rice-growing technology, which led to the development of the MR219 padi which has better survival rates and a higher yield.

However, there is a downside. Just as how North Korea can (allegedly) be using something as innocent as a restaurant for nefarious purposes, you have to also wonder what might be happening behind the curtains of this happy relationship. For instance, you might remember the huge Sony Pictures hack in 2014, apparently carried out by North Korean hackers. Well, the US National Security Agency found that North Korean hackers connect to the internet through…. Malaysia.

Also, North Korea also has a totally weird kidnapping program that was started by Kim-Il-sun and expanded by Kim Jong-il, where people from other countries are kidnapped to repopulate North Korea, have their passports used by spies, and teach spies the language and culture of their native countries. Some of these countries named are Japan, Thailand, France, and…. Malaysia.

As it turns out, Kim Jong-nam had been living in exile, moving between Macau, China, Singapore, and… Malaysia, where he’s been spotted as early as 2012. With the assassination of Kim Jong-nam taking place on Malaysian soil, and sources claiming that North Korean officials “spent hours” trying to convince Malaysian authorities to not perform an autopsy on his body, perhaps it’s wise to consider the advice our parents gave us growing up – there can be such a thing as a bad friend.

Except in this instance, the bad friend was the one who didn’t want to friend us.