[There are thousands of North Koreans living in Russia near the border, including families of diplomats based at the country’s Vladivostok consulate, employees of Vladivostok’s North Korean restaurants, and laborers contracted out to Russian companies.]
By Anton Troianovski
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North Korean workers hawk their country’s wares at a fair in
Vladivostok, Russia,
celebrating the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding.
(Photo by Anton Troianovski/The Washington Post)
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NAKHODKA,
Russia — Vasily Kolchanov
still shows up for work every morning, even though he has little to do these
days. The United States sanctioned him last month over claims he helped North
Korea buy oil.
“Should I shoot myself? Or, no, I shouldn’t
shoot myself,” Kolchanov, a shipping agent, muttered from behind his bushy
mustache in this port of Nakhodka in Russia’s Far East.
A North Korean refrigerated cargo ship
approached. The 72-year-old Kolchanov hoped it would bring some much-needed
work for his company, which provides document logistics and other services.
“The Koreans are our last hope for keeping
ourselves fed,” he said in his office, based on the ground floor of a
Soviet-era apartment block where bedsheets and undergarments dangle from the
balconies.
Seven time zones and 4,000 miles from Moscow
— or a 100-minute flight from North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang — the fate of
Russia’s Far East is bound up in the diplomacy playing out on the Korean
Peninsula and Washington.
An outcome that opens up North Korea to more
trade and investment could be a boon for places such as Nakhodka, just 115
miles from the North Korean border. The region is so close, in fact, that the
ground shook during last year’s nuclear test blast by the regime of Kim Jong Un
The region’s bonds with Korea have deep — and
tragic — roots.
Before World War II, some 170,000 ethnic
Koreans lived in the Russian Far East. Stalin viewed them as a liability
because Japan occupied Korea at the time. He had virtually all of them loaded
onto trains and relocated to Central Asia.
Now, South Korean tourism to the Russian Far
East is booming, marketed as a “European getaway two hours away.” More than
70,000 South Korean tourists came in the first half of this year, on pace to
double last year’s total.
North Korean officials, in turn, flock to
Russia’s Far East to find ways to boost trade despite sanctions. At a festival
this month to mark North Korea’s 70th year, young women in traditional dress
hawked candy, cosmetics, and North Korea’s version of Viagra.
“Please buy something!” Cha Jaegon, an organizer
of the fair who had flown in from Pyongyang for the occasion, said in English.
Russians, meanwhile, grumble that the
international economic squeeze against Kim’s regime is driving away the
low-cost North Korean labor that has been the backbone of the construction work
across the Russian Far East.
The Kremlin invited both North Korea’s
leader, Kim Jong Un, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in to attend a
regional economic forum earlier this month in Vladivostok, the biggest city in
Russia’s Far East. Neither showed up.
But many of the discussions touched on the
ongoing overtures on the Korean Peninsula, capped most recently by a summit in
Pyongyang between Kim and Moon. At one session in Vladivostok, North Korean and
South Korean officials offered ideas of a rail link from South Korea to
Russia’s Trans-Siberian Railway — which would sharply cut travel time for South
Korean products to Europe.
Earlier this month, Vladivostok’s waterfront
throbbed with martial melodies and triumphant chords. The anniversary
celebration for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — the official name
of North Korea — was in full swing, complete with a giant video screen
venerating the leader Kim.
Booths were decorated with the Russian and
North Korean flags.
Curious South Koreans toured the fair, some
of them getting personal tutorials in North Korean history from Jong Song Ho,
the head of the North Korean delegation, who was wearing a sleek blue suit,
aviator sunglasses, and a red pin with likenesses of his country’s leaders.
There are thousands of North Koreans living
in Russia near the border, including families of diplomats based at the
country’s Vladivostok consulate, employees of Vladivostok’s North Korean
restaurants, and laborers contracted out to Russian companies.
Still, Li Almaz, a South Korean who runs a
tourism business in Vladivostok and has lived there for five years, said he has
no North Korean friends.
“They’re afraid,” he surmised.
The sanctions frustrate local business
leaders, but some are seeking ways to profit from the region’s proximity to
North Korea.
Valentin Pak, a local politician and
businessman, has converted a room in his office suite into a storage area for
non-sanctioned North Korean consumer goods he hopes to sell to Russians.
They include items as simple as a
four-inch-tall figure of a pig dressed up as a North Korean pilot. The ears are
affixed asymmetrically. The red-star sleeve insignia was printed on paper and
cut out with scissors. The nose is two uneven dots scrawled with a marker.
It will go for around $3, Pak said.
“It’s all about revenue for them,” said Pak
of the North Koreans.
The United States alleges that North Korea
uses the Russian Far East as a hub of illicit trade to get around U.N.
sanctions, which Russia voted for last year and now wants to loosen.
In August, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned two
Vladivostok shipping companies for taking part in the practice.
A week later, Treasury slapped sanctions on
Kolchanov and his small shipping agency, Profinet.
“Kolchanov was personally involved in North
Korea-related deals and interacted directly with North Korean representatives
in Russia,” said a Treasury statement to The Washington Post.
As a shipping agent, Kolchanov handles the
reams of paperwork required for ships to enter and exit port, collects fees and
solves last-minute problems on board.
Kolchanov admits that he often does business
with North Korea but insists he did nothing illegal.
When the sanctions hit, Kolchanov said, six
empty North Korean oil tankers that were his clients were entering or already
at the port of Vladivostok. He serviced all six of them, but he said they all
left without taking on any oil. He presented business records that purported to
back up his account.
Kolchanov figures that those six ships are
what got him in trouble with Treasury, which mentioned “at least six separate
occasions” in which he serviced North Korea-flagged ships. A Treasury official
declined to detail further why it sanctioned Kolchanov, but said that the
department has had the authority to sanction people “operating in the energy or
transportation industries of the North Korean economy” since 2016.
Kolchanov said he will push ahead in doing
legal business with North Korea because his other foreign customers have
largely cut ties.
“They are our neighbors, right?” Kolchanov
said of North Korea. “You need to be friends with your neighbors.”
John Hudson in Washington and Min Joo Kim in
Seoul contributed to this report.
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