Cambodia-North Korea Relations Since 1964
A Historical Review by H.E. Dr. Kin Phea, Director-General of the International Relations Institute of Cambodia (IRIC), Royal Academy of Cambodia.
UPDATE: To commemorate the 30th anniversary of King Norodom Sihanouk receiving the title, Hero of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea - the highest honorary title to praise heroic achievements - today’s Long Mekong Daily has published an overview of Cambodia-DPRK relations and a brief synopsis of the early days of Kim Il Sung in his struggle to end Japanese colonisation.
NB: President Kim Il Sung awarded the title of Hero of the DPRK, together with Gold Medal (Hammer and Sickle) and Order of National Flag First Class to His Majesty the Great King Norodom Sihanouk on 03 November 1992 at Kumsusan Assembly Hall, Pyongyang, DPRK, in order to highly appreciate his distinguished service, as President of Supreme National Council, devoted in national unity and reconcilement, and reconstruction of independent and neutral Cambodia and also to praise merit of His Majesty for supporting the Korean people’s cause of national reunification in the 10th Summit of Non-Aligned Movement.
Cambodia-North Korea Relations Since 1964: A Historical Review
By H.E. Dr. Kin Phea, Director-General of the International Relations Institute of Cambodia (IRIC), Royal Academy of Cambodia.
Diplomatic relations between Cambodia and North Korea date back to mid-1960s. These relations were fostered by King Norodom Sihanouk and the late Great Leader Generalissimo Kim Il Sung. The bilateral relations were strengthened over the years through high-level visits between leaders of the two countries.
For past decades, the relations between the two countries had been categorised as unique ones based on a strong personal tie between two leaders rather than for the national interests, and it was not based on geopolitical location and cultural connection.
However, after Kim Il Sung passed away, then Kim Jung Il, and finally King Norodom Sihanouk, marked the end of the special relationship between Cambodia and North Korea – and with no Princes or Great Leaders linking arms, the two nations’ destinies hardly seem linked either. Moreover, in 1996, the aspect of Cambodia’s relationship with North Korea was changed as Co-Prime Minister Hun Sen initiated diplomatic tie restoration with South Korea even though King Norodom Sihanouk strongly opposed. Eventually, the relations between Cambodia and North Korea have become nominal.
The diplomatic relations between Cambodia and North Korea were officially established on December 28, 1964 while there were two major factors affecting North Korea’s approach to foreign policy in the decades after the Korean War: the split between the Soviet Union and China and the emergence of post-colonial states and the Non-Aligned Movement. In the 1960s, as many newly independent nations joined the UN, North Korea expanded its diplomatic relations, particularly in Africa. By the late 1960s, South Korea ended its policy of maintaining diplomatic ties only with countries that did not recognize North Korea, allowing the scope of diplomatic outreach for both Koreas to expand (Daniel & Kim 2015, 3).
The unique relationship between Cambodia and North Korea dates back to 1965, when Indonesian President Sukarno introduced North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung to Cambodia’s mercurial King Norodom Sihanouk at a non-aligned summit in Jakarta (Sebastian 2011). The rest of the world figures from that landmark gathering and movement - Indonesia's President Sukarno, Yugoslavia's Tito, Egypt's Nasser, India's Nehru, Kim Il Sung, and China's Zhou En Lai - were dead. But for King Sihanouk, the event launched a long and valued friendship between North Korea and Cambodia, a relationship that had affected the foreign policy of both countries at key moments in their tumultuous histories (Cat 2007). At first glance, the Mao-suited ‘Great Leader’ and the urbane Cambodian monarch seemed cut from different cloth, but the pair quickly established an amity that bounded their two nations into a close partnership . The bilateral relations were strengthened over the years through high-level visits between leaders of the two countries (Sebastian 2011).
After the 1965 meeting, Cambodia almost immediately decided to give diplomatic recognition to North Korea and withdrew it from South Korea, a political debt that was never forgotten by Kim Il Sung whose country was then ignored by the majority of non-aligned countries, and was often repaid over the years to Prince Sihanouk - both personally and politically (Cat 2007). Julio A. Jeldres, Sihanouk’s official biographer, argued that the amity between Sihanouk and Kim was unique that it wasn’t predicated on ‘ideology, strategic or trade interests.’ The relationship was purely based on the friendship between the two leaders and the support they gave to each other during difficult times. In his 2005 memoir, Sihanouk wrote that Kim was “my surest and most sincere friend and the most steadfast in my support. Even more than a friend: a true brother and my only ‘true relative’ after the death of my mother (Geoffrey 2013, 154).”
Milton Osborne, an Australian diplomat turned writer, describes the relationship between Cambodia and North Korea as “puzzling, even bizarre.” He said: “A more unlikely association it is difficult to imagine. For reasons that have never been very clear, Sihanouk found comfort in an extraordinary exchange of mutual admiration (Berger 2005).” The relationship between Sihanouk and Kim Il Sung solidified in March 1970 when Sihanouk was toppled through the military coup led by General Lon Nol and supported by the United States. In mid-1960s, King Sihanouk’s power was shaky. His balancing act between the left and the right became harder to maintain.
Cross-border smuggling of rice also began to have a serious effect on the Cambodian economy. In the Cambodian elections of 1966, the usual Sangkum policy of having one candidate in each electoral district was abandoned; there was a huge swing to the right, especially as left-wing deputies had to compete directly with members of the traditional elite, who were able to use their local influence. Lon Nol, a rightist who had been a longstanding associate of King Sihanouk, became the Prime Minister.
By 1969, Lon Nol and the rightists were increasingly frustrated with Sihanouk. Although the basis for this was partly economic, political considerations were also involved. In particular, the nationalist and anti-communist sensibilities of Lon Nol and his associates meant that King Sihanouk’s policy of semi-toleration of Viet Cong and Vietnam People’s Army activity within Cambodian borders was unacceptable; King Sihanouk, during his swing to the left in 1963–66, had negotiated a secret arrangement with Hanoi whereby in return for the guaranteed purchase of rice at inflated prices, the port of Sihanoukville was opened for weapons shipments to the Viet Cong. As well as the rightist nationalists, the liberal modernizing elements within the Sangkum, headed by In Tam, had also become increasingly alienated by King Sihanouk's autocratic style.
In March 1970, while Sihanouk was touring Europe, the Soviet Union and China, large-scale anti-Vietnamese demonstrations erupted in Phnom Penh. Crowds attacked the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong (Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam) embassies. Sihanouk initially gave a certain degree of support to the demonstrators; he hoped Moscow and Beijing would pressure North Vietnam to reduce its presence in Cambodia. Indeed, it has even been suggested (by William Shawcross and others) that King Sihanouk and Lon Nol might have planned the first demonstrations to gain political leverage against Hanoi.
The riots, however, escalated beyond the government's control – although this was likely done with a degree of encouragement from Lon Nol and Sirik Matak – and the embassy was sacked. Inside, a “contingency plan” was allegedly found for the communists to occupy Cambodia. On March 12, Sirik Matak cancelled King Sihanouk’s trade agreement with North Vietnam; Lon Nol closed the port of Sihanoukville to the North Vietnamese and issued an impossible ultimatum to them: all People's Army of Vietnam aka. North Vietnamese Army (PAVN) and National Liberation Front aka. Viet Cong forces (NLF) were to withdraw from Cambodian soil within 72 hours (on March 15) or face military action. When, by the morning of 16 March, it was clear that this demand had not been met, some 30,000 youths gathered outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh to protest against the Vietnamese presence.
On March 18 1970, the army took up positions around the capital, and a debate was held within the National Assembly under In Tam’s direction. The rest of the assembly unanimously voted to withdraw confidence in Sihanouk. Lon Nol took over the powers of the Head of State on an emergency basis, while the position itself was taken by the President of the General Assembly, Cheng Heng. In Tam was confirmed as President of the Sangkum. The coup had, therefore, followed essentially constitutional forms rather than being a blatant military takeover. These events marked the foundation of the Khmer Republic. Five days later, King Sihanouk appealed from Beijing urging his followers to join the resistance army in the marquis. Many Cambodian farmers did. Prince Sihanouk formed an exile government based in Beijing, backed by China, North Vietnam and some other communist countries.
North Korea transferred its recognition to the resistance front headed by King Sihanouk from his exile in Beijing after his overthrow (Sebastian 2011). In 1979 when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge, North Korea risked the ire of the rest of the Eastern block to give its support to the new Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) - the Cambodian struggle against the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. North Korea risked its long-lasting relationship with Vietnam, a socialist comrade, to extend support to Sihanouk and the coalition government over which he presided (Cat 2007). During his visit to Pyongyang in June 1970, Sihanouk was treated as a visiting head of state, being entertained in state banquets and welcomed in special mass rallies. In addition, Kim Il Sung gave him the assurance of North Korean support, as described in his memoirs:
"President Kim Il Sung gave me, in conclusion, the assurance that whatever might happen to me in the future, he, his party, his people, his state would never abandon me, would always support me in whatever I might undertake for my country especially for its national independence and its territorial integrity, and would always offer me the most generous and caring hospitality" (Sihanouk 2005, 154).
During King Sihanouk’s first period of exile (1970-1975), Kim Il Sung ordered the North Korean military put the finishing touches on a 60-room Korean-style palace for King Sihanouk at Changsuwon, a picturesque lake about 45-minute drive from Pyongyang. In his book Three Days in the Hermit Kingdom, American Eddie Burdick wrote that from the sky the palace was “oddly reminiscent of the main complex at Angkor Wat,” set among hills “peppered with military installations of various types – including numerous surface-to-air missile batteries (Sebastian 2011).” Reciprocally, Sihanouk spent these years composing political or revolutionary-style songs praising Kim Il Sung and the people of North Korea. Throughout the 1970s, Sihanouk languished for a few months every year in his North Korean home, making a series of films starring North Korean actors (Geoffrey 2013). His family took boat trips there, played badminton and swam in the pool (McPherson 2014). After the coalition between King Sihanouk and Khmer Rouge, supported by China, had gained victory over the Lon Nol regime in 1975, Sihanouk returned to Phnom Penh to become thetitular head of state before being deposed by Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot in the following year and put under house arrest.His son, the Cambodia’s current King Norodom Sihamoni, continued to study filmmaking in North Korea until he was calledto join the family in Phnom Penh in 1977.
King Sihanouk’s second exile period began in December 1978 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia, expelled the pro-Chinese Khmer Rouge, and established the pro-Vietnamese Heng Samrin regime. King Sihanouk flew to Beijing and soonafterwards, according to his memoirs, found that although China opposed Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia, it preferred theKhmer Rouge to Sihanouk to become a leading faction in the anti-Vietnamese coalition. Therefore, he decided to go toPyongyang for consolation (Sihanouk 2005, 218-221).
During his second exile period (1979-1991), Sihanouk spent at least two months a year at Changsuwon, maintaining atight schedule of “drafting statements, correspondence, book writing, audiences to foreign diplomats and visiting journalists”(Sebastian 2011). He claimed that the environment there was quieter and more conducive to writing his memoirs than in Beijing (Burns 1985). However, the real reason might be his frustration with China and his admiration of Kim Il Sung’s support forhim as a leading figure in the anti-Vietnamese coalition, as revealed in his interview in North Korea to Western journalists in1979:
“Since my arrival, President Kim Il Sung has never asked me to cooperate with the Khmer Rouge. President Kim Il Sung told me: “Isupport only you... Prince Sihanouk…only you, not the Khmer Rouge... only you”. The embassy of the Khmer Rouge is still here, butits name is never mentioned. President Kim Il Sung said only one sentence: “I support only Prince Sihanouk!”. In contrast, Chinanever supports Prince Sihanouk. Never. China said: “Prince Sihanouk must support Pol Pot (Schier & Schier-Oum 1981, 135-136).”
As though sensing his visitor’s thoughts, King Sihanouk said: “To understand Sihanouk, you have to know that I am anAsian man - I am a yellow man, not a white man. So I am guided by sentimental feelings, by feelings of gratitude, and itis those that are most important to me. I will always be grateful to my hosts here, and in China, for giving me everythingwhen everything was lost (Burns 1985).”
In 1980, the Soviet Union officially asked North Korea to shut the door on Sihanouk. Although North Korea wasreceiving extensive assistance from the Soviet Union as well as other Communist and Socialist countries at the time, Kim IlSung refused, telling his powerful benefactors that “our Communism is not honorable unless it supports the patriots likeSihanouk who struggle for the independence of their country and the freedom of his people,” according to Sihanouk’s officialbiographer, Julio A. Jeldres (Cat 2007).
After the peace settlement of Cambodia was endorsed by the International Conference on Cambodia in Paris in October1991, Prince Sihanouk returned to Cambodia in the following month with the North Korean bodyguards, commanded by ageneral from Kim Il Sung’s presidential bodyguards (Lintner). Sihanouk was quoted by Reuters in 1994 that “I wasoverthrown by my own royal guards, I am better protected by 25 North Koreans from the Democratic Republic of Korea[sic] (Sebastian 2011).” In September 1993, 38 years after leaving the throne, Prince Sihanouk was crowned King yet again.The new post-UNTAC Constitution assigned him ceremonial powers, specifying that he was to reign, but not rule.
On June 5, 1937, the Dong-A Ilbo, then as now one of the leading Korean dailies, recounted an incident that took place in the small township of Pochonbo on the Korean border with China. The newspaper reported that a band of Korean “communist bandits” from China attacked the Japanese police in this city, took it over, burned some Japanese agencies and then withdrew safely. This was sensational: the years of guerrilla activities in Korea proper were long over, and since the early 1910s the Korean guerrillas only operated overseas. A daring raid of the “communist bandits” (whom many Koreans consider “Korean freedom fighters”) came as a complete surprise. The raid was led by a young commander whose name – Kim Il -sung – thus became widely known across the country.
Kim Il-sung, then still known under his birth name of Kim Sǒng-ju, spent his childhood in China where his family moved in around 1920, fleeing both economic insecurity and political persecution. Kim Il-sung’s father, Kim Hyǒng-jik, a missionary-educated school teacher and herbalist, was a lifelong nationalist sympathiser. Kim Il-sung was still a middle school student when he lost his father in 1926, not an unusual fate in the era when the average male life expectancy was less than 30. His mother did not live much longer.
It is hard to find traces of an emerging supreme leader in the Kim Il-sung of the 1920s and 1930s. He was a high school graduate and, back in the Manchuria of 1930, this was a remarkably high level of educational achievement. His education opened a way to a traditional career path, but he joined a guerrilla unit in the Chinese communist forces based on a mixture of nationalist and communist idealism. There were many people like him and many paid with their lives. In the 1930s those young Korean communists, together with Korean nationalists and, of course, together with the Chinese of all political persuasions challenged the might of Imperial Japan which in 1931 stepped up its aggression against China.
In 1931 Japanese forces invaded and occupied the three north eastern provinces of China. They proclaimed this territory’s “independence” from China and established the puppet state of Manchuguo (literally, “the state of Manchuria”). The last Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China from 1644-1911, became the titular monarch of this state, but all control over its activity remained in the hands of the Japanese military – sufficient to say that the commander Japanese forces in the area was by default an “ambassador” to the Manchuguo court and “adviser” to the puppet emperor.
This turn of events outraged both the Chinese nationalists who could not stand the encroachment of Japan into Chinese lands and Korean nationalists who were ready to fight the Japanese everywhere. The communists of both nations were eager to take a stand against the most aggressive imperialist power in the region. In the years 1931-1932, thousands of people of all nationalities and persuasions joined the guerrilla units that appeared in the mountains in great numbers.
Around 1935, Kim Sông-ju adopted a nom-de-guerre that would resonate through history: he became Kim Il-sung. The young guerrilla showed himself to be a good, able, and brave soldier, so his career progressed fast. In 1936, the 24-year-old fighter was the commander of the Sixth Division, which included a few hundred fighters and operated in Manchuria near the Korean border. By that time he was probably the best known ethnic Korean commander operating in the area.
At dawn on June 4, 1937, Kim Il-sung led some 150-200 guerrillas to the city of Pochonbo. This small-scale but daring operation was the highest point in Kim’s decade-long career as a guerrilla commander. In the late 1930s Japanese forces and their local collaborators prevailed, and the guerrilla resistance in Manchuria was gradually wiped out. In late 1940, the few survivors, including Kim Il-sung and his wife, found asylum across the border, in the USSR.
In the summer of 1942, the Soviet command decided to establish a special unit which would include these guerrillas. Most of them were Chinese, but Koreans constituted a significant minority. This unit was known as the 88th independent brigade, and its base was located in the village of Viatsk (Viatskoe) near Khabarovsk. This is where Kim Il-sung’s wife gave birth to a son who was given the name Kim Jong-il.
Korean guerrillas, many of whom had once fought under the command of Kim Il-sung, served in Kim’s first battalion, while three other battalions of the brigade consisted of ethnic Chinese. During their sojourn in Viatsk, Kim Il Sung and his wife Kim Chông-suk had two more children. At that time a return to Korea did not look very plausible for Kim. According to a fellow officer, Kim Il-sung saw his future quite clearly: service in the Red Army, study at a military academy, then the command of a regiment or, with a stroke of luck, even a division.
However, history took another turn. When in 1945 the Soviets drove the Japanese away from northern Korea, they decided to create an independent, but Soviet friendly government, for Korea. Kim Il-sung, young, charismatic, and respected in Korea because of his earlier guerrilla exploits, was seen as the best candidate to head such a government. This decision started a chain of events in which Kim Il-sung and the Korean guerrillas in Manchuria, who were heroes back in the 1930s when they waged their desperate struggle against the mighty enemy, became the leaders of modern North Korea.
Adapted from reports and articles