Ri Jong-ok Faces 4 Percent Interest on 700 Million Rubles
By Roy Castellano ·
North Korean officials lied about publishing an abusive book on the Soviet Union while seeking a 4.1 million metric ton steel expansion.
The delegation from the Workers' Party of Korea arrived at the congress of the CPSU with a carefully managed disposition. They were led by Premier Ri Jong-ok, a Politburo member, and accompanied by a staff of fourteen. According to a report from the Embassy of Hungary in North Korea to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry—a published English translation from the Cold War International History Project—the Koreans behaved in a "correct way." There were no demonstrative gestures. They were the model of socialist discipline, provided that discipline did not require them to applaud. When the Cambodian delegation was welcomed, the Koreans rose from their seats, but they remained silent, refusing to join the applause.
"Correct Way"
In the world of high-level diplomacy between Marxist-Leninist states, silence is often a louder communication than a speech. The refusal to applaud Cambodia was a small flicker, but the real substance of the visit lay in the transactional demands brought by Ri Jong-ok. The Workers' Party of Korea, which the public record notes controls both the state and the Korean People's Army, did not come to Moscow for ideological fellowship. They came for steel and money.
The central economic demand concerned the Kim Chaek metal combine. The Korean side requested that the Soviet Union speed up the reconstruction of the enterprise and expand its capacity from one million metric tons to 4.1 million metric tons by 1985. It was a massive request for industrial scaling, the kind of leap that requires not just raw materials but an immense infusion of technical expertise and capital. The Soviet response, delivered by Comrade Tikhonov, was a study in bureaucratic deflection: the request was referred to "the level of experts," which in the lexicon of the Kremlin usually means it has been moved to a folder where it can be ignored or delayed.
4 Percent Interest
While the steel plant was the long-term goal, the immediate pressure was the debt. The DPRK had already received a credit of 700 million rubles, due for repayment by 1985. The Koreans asked for a reprieve, requesting that 400 million of those rubles be pushed beyond the 1985 deadline. Tikhonov agreed, but the Soviet Union did not provide this leniency for free. The Soviets stipulated that after 1985, the interest rate would jump from 2 percent to 4 percent.
The report notes that this "surprised" the Korean delegation. The Soviet justification was based on the "actual value" of the credits given in the sixties—essentially an adjustment for inflation and the diminishing returns of the lending. For a state like North Korea, such a shift in interest rates is not a mere accounting detail; it is a tightening of the leash. The Soviets were signaling that the era of the open tab was closing, and that the DPRK's dependence on Moscow would henceforth carry a higher price.
To offset these costs, the Koreans offered cooperation in the exploitation of coking coal in Siberia and sought to extend a bilateral agreement on lumbering in the Far Eastern districts, which was set to expire in March 1982. These were the trades of a client state: raw materials in exchange for the survival of its industrial base.
A Book in Foreign Languages
Beyond the rubles and the steel, there was the matter of nuclear power. The premier of the DPRK requested the delivery of a nuclear power plant. Tikhonov’s response was a masterclass in the "long game." He categorized the request as "complicated" and part of "long-term planning." To further dampen the expectation, he pointed to the Soviet cooperation with Czechoslovakia and other European socialist countries, noting that the beneficiaries were required to contribute to the investments themselves. The Korean delegation, unable to offer a "genuine answer" to the question of how they would pay, found their nuclear ambitions stalled by a balance sheet.
Then there was the friction over Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia. Tikhonov was blunt, describing the DPRK's behavior toward Sihanouk as "incomprehensible." The specific point of contention was a book by Sihanouk containing abusive comments about the Soviet Union, which the DPRK had published in foreign languages. When confronted, Ri Jong-ok and his delegation "pretended not to have heard of the existence of such a book."
It was a clumsy lie. The report mentions that Soviet diplomats in Pyongyang had already confirmed the book had been pulled from sale on March 6. The Koreans attempted to frame Sihanouk's presence in Pyongyang as mere "hospitality," justifying it by noting that Sihanouk had been the first head of state to break diplomatic relations with South Korea. To the WPK, the tactical advantage of snubbing Seoul outweighed the diplomatic cost of offending Moscow.
Tikhonov viewed this through the lens of "hot spots" and China's "hegemonic aspirations," seeing the DPRK's maneuvers in Southeast Asia as a dangerous misalignment. The meeting ended with a stark divide in perspective. While the Soviets were analyzing the global board, the political information provided by the Korean side did not cover the international situation at all. It was confined to a description of their own situation and an analysis of bilateral relations.