North Korea’s ”Guerrilla Internationalism”

With North Korea becoming an increasingly dangerous threat to the U.S. and its allies, it can be all too easy to overlook North Korea’s origins and how its foreign policy first took shape. One of the lesser known aspects of North Korea’s foreign policy was its heavy involvement in supporting non-state actor and rebel movements in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

 

Benjamin Young, a PhD Candidate in East Asian History at George Washington University, recently presented his paper on North Korea’s support of non-state actors as part of KEI’s Academic Paper Series. He sat down with Korean Kontext guest host Juni Kim to discuss how North Korea’s first leader Kim Il Sung’s experiences in guerrilla warfare shaped his foreign policy and what his legacy means for North Korea today.

 

Please note the following corrections:

16:59 - Kim Il-Sung died in 1994

17:49 - The aid agency is called Doctors Without Borders