600 Japanese citizens used China to slip into North Korea
By Roy Castellano ·
India feared US reprisals while 600 Japanese citizens lied on visa forms to enter Pyongyang, hiding trade ties and using China as a buffer to bypass Western containment.
On November 29, 1957, in Pyongyang, Deputy Foreign Minister Pak Seong-cheol sat down with GDR Ambassador Fischer and a man named Comrade Behrens. According to an English translation of a German document published by the Cold War International History Project from the Wilson Center Digital Archive, the meeting was not a social call. The East Germans had come with a list of questions. They wanted to know how the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) was actually faring with the "Bandung states"—the non-aligned nations of Asia and Africa.
For a targeting analyst, this document reads like a map of vulnerabilities. It is a study in how a pariah state attempts to find cracks in a Western containment wall, using trade as a wedge and third-party nations as shields. The DPRK was not looking for friendship; it was looking for markets and legitimacy, while the nations it courted were terrified of the cost of being seen with them.
Nehru's Hesitation
India presented the most frustrating case for Pyongyang. Pak Seong-cheol described a dance of avoidance. A Korean delegation had traveled to India, meeting with the Minister of Trade and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru himself. The interest in trade was mutual, but the political cost was too high.
India’s position was rigid: no political or trade agreements could be signed at the government level. Instead, any actual contracts had to be signed by "trade organizations." This was a semantic firewall. By stripping the state's name from the paperwork, India hoped to avoid the gaze of the powers it actually feared. Pak noted that India was "afraid of reprisals" from a list of "imperialist powers" that included the United States, West Germany, England, and Japan.
This is the reality of deterrence in the periphery. India wanted the goods, but it could not afford the diplomatic friction that would follow a formal alliance with Pyongyang. The result was a stunted relationship where the DPRK was forced to prepare a banking delegation just to figure out how to move money without triggering a crisis in New Delhi.
Rubber, Coconuts, and Steel
In Indonesia and Burma, the DPRK found more flexibility, though it remained shrouded in secrecy. In Indonesia, the trade was concrete and utilitarian. The Indonesians wanted to export rubber, coconuts, and raw materials for cosmetics; in exchange, the DPRK offered cement, steel, non-ferrous metals, and window glass.
There was a clear imbalance of power here. Indonesia wanted to export heavily but import very little, a result of a "bad hard currency situation." The accountancy was settled in British pounds. Pak also observed that the Indonesian government was under "massive pressure" from the underclass to improve relations with the North. The only real opposition came from the Masyumi Party, which the GDR diplomats’ note identifies as representing the "upper and comprador bourgeoisie."
Burma was even more surreal. The DPRK delegation arrived to find total silence. They were received by nobody. They had to find their own hotel. The Burmese press ignored them entirely. Pak explained this as a tactical necessity; because representatives from the United States, England, and Israel were present in Burma, the Burmese government felt it had to "keep the presence of a DPRK delegation secret."
It is a telling detail: a government delegation that exists only in the dark. Only after the delegation "checked with the government" were they finally received. The secrecy was the price of admission.
A Middleman in Beijing
Japan offered the most complex game of all. The record shows that over three years, roughly 600 Japanese citizens had visited the DPRK. These were not tourists; they were political activists and members of the communist and socialist parties. To get there, they performed a choreographed deception. They obtained visas in Japan by signing statements promising they would not travel to the DPRK. Once they arrived in China, they were invited by the North and crossed the border.
Upon their return to Japan, they faced few consequences. The Japanese government, according to Pak, practiced a form of "tacit approval." The state officially denied exporting goods to Korea, yet the Deputy Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Transportation had privately instructed trade organizations to expand their dealings with Pyongyang.
Why the hypocrisy? Raw materials. Japan knew exactly what the DPRK possessed, and the shipping routes were short. Transporting those same resources from Europe or other parts of Asia was too expensive. Japan was caught between its alliance with Western powers and its own industrial needs. To resolve the tension, it used China as a buffer. The trade flowed through Beijing, allowing the Japanese government to maintain a veneer of compliance with the West while fueling its factories with North Korean resources.
This pattern of "tacit approval" and "secret delegations" suggests a world where the official lines of the Cold War were frequently bypassed for the sake of the balance sheet. The document concludes with the DPRK's anticipation of the Asian-African Conference in Cairo, scheduled for February 26, 1958. The North hoped the event would address the problem of Korean reunification, though at the time of the note, the members of the delegation had not yet been named.