African Presidents and Communists Demand US Nuclear Forces Leave South Korea

By Vera Kessler · August 14, 2026

American nuclear forces and technical patents were targeted by African presidents and communists in Brussels seeking to choke Seoul's industrial capacity.

Brussels, February 21-22, 1977. Two days of discussion, a drafting committee, and a resolution intended to shift the atmospheric pressure of the Cold War in Western Europe. This was the World Conference for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea.

According to a report from the Embassy of Hungary in Belgium to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry—available in English translation via the Cold War International History Project—the event was not merely a North Korean exercise in diplomacy. It was a coordinated effort involving the Belgian Socialist Party and the Communist Party of Belgium, with the added participation of Christian Democratic public figures in the preparatory commission.

Madagascar, Togo, and Panama The roster of the "international supporting commission" suggests a deliberate attempt to project a Third World consensus. The commission included Didier Ratsiraka, President of the Malagasy Republic, Gnassingbé Eyadéma, President of the Republic of Togo, and Mathieu Kérékou, President of the People’s Republic of Benin.

These heads of state were joined by an eclectic mix of political actors: Narita Tomomi, Chairperson of the Japan Socialist Party; Minobe, the Governor of Tokyo; and Carrillo, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain. From Latin America came Rómulo Escobar Bethancourt, Rector of the University of Panama and special adviser to the head of state.

This gathering in Brussels represents a specific moment in the 1970s where the diplomatic peripheries of the Global South were leveraged to pressure the center of the West. The presence of African presidents alongside Spanish communists and Japanese socialists suggests a broad, if precarious, front organized to challenge the status quo of the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, the inclusion of Christian Democratic figures in the preparatory commission is a telling detail. In the rigid ideological divides of the era, the alignment of Christian Democrats—traditionally a pillar of the center-right—with the Communist Party of Belgium suggests a tactical agility. It indicates that the "peaceful reunification" narrative was designed to appeal across the Belgian political spectrum, creating a facade of domestic unity.

Minister Kim Seok-gi The government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) maintained a lean presence. Minister of Education Kim Seok-gi headed a delegation consisting of a "few persons."

By sending the Minister of Education rather than a high-ranking foreign ministry official or a military leader, the DPRK may have been signaling the "civilian" and "peaceful" nature of the mission. It framed the Korean question as one of national tragedy and education rather than one of strategic aggression. While the international commission provided the optics of global solidarity, the DPRK provided the specific agenda.

Public records establish that by 1977, the peninsula had been divided for over three decades, a result of the post-WWII split along the 38th parallel and the stalemate of the 1950-53 Korean War. Both the North and South claimed sole legitimacy over the entire territory. For Kim Seok-gi and his colleagues, the Brussels conference was a vehicle to bypass the Seoul regime and speak directly to the populations of the West.

"Mobilize world public opinion" The resolution adopted by the conference was not vague. Its primary objective, as stated in the introduction, was to "mobilize world public opinion," specifically targeting "West European countries and North America." The organizers believed these regions were "poorly informed about the Korean question" and sought to highlight a nation "divided against its will."

Beyond the rhetoric of tragedy, the resolution contained hard demands. It explicitly called attention to the "danger of stationing American nuclear forces in South Korea" and demanded their "immediate withdrawal."

The document further targets the technical and financial conduits of the South Korean state. The resolution described the "increasing cooperation of certain states with the Seoul regime in the military and nuclear field" as "deeply disquieting." It urged every state to cease providing the Seoul regime with "patents and technical and financial assistance" that could be used for the "establishment of defense factories."

The focus on "patents" is a precise detail. It suggests that the conference was not just fighting a political war, but a technical one. By calling for a halt to the transfer of intellectual property and technical assistance, the resolution aimed to choke the industrial capacity of the South Korean military-industrial complex.

The report, signed by Ambassador József Vince, captures a strategic attempt to weaponize Western public opinion against the military infrastructure of South Korea. It sought to frame the South’s armament capacity not as a defense against the North, but as a threat to peace.

While this report provides a snapshot of the 1977 conference, other records offer different angles on the era's diplomatic frictions. The Department of State’s FRUS volumes contain memoranda by Christopher Van Hollen regarding the Geneva Conference of 1952–1954, and later CIA chronologies from 1986 and 1987 track the North's movements in a different decade. Neither of those records speaks to the specific Belgian effort of February 1977.

The Hungarian embassy's report does not record the reaction of the Belgian government or the response from the United States to these demands. It leaves open whether the "poorly informed" public in West Europe and North America ever encountered the resolution, or if the mobilization remained confined to the conference hall in Brussels.