The Peninsula

Cuba Opens Embassy in Seoul and North Korea Makes Its Displeasure Known

On June 10, Cuba’s first Ambassador to South Korea Claudio Monzón Baeza formally opened his country’s embassy in Seoul. The festive event was held with the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ director-general for Latin American affairs and included remarks from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ director-general for Asia and Oceania. The Cuban diplomats praised this opportunity for “enhancing friendly relations and mutually beneficial cooperation.” Prensa Latina, the official Cuban press agency, issued a positive report.

This formal opening of the embassy marks the final step in establishing full diplomatic relations between the two countries. The initial announcement that the two would establish diplomatic ties was made on February 14, 2024, when the UN ambassadors of South Korea and Cuba announced the formal exchange of diplomatic notes agreeing to establish ambassadors and open embassies in each other’s capitals. That announcement came as a surprise because there were no reports or even press leaks indicating that establishing diplomatic relations was under consideration.

South Korea formally opened its embassy in Havana on February 17, 2025, eleven months after the announcement of the decision to establish relations. Now, with the official opening of the Cuban embassy in Seoul, the establishment of diplomatic ties is completed.

This is not to suggest that there will be a sudden increase in economic exchanges, tourism, or other links. South Korea has the twelfth-largest economy in the world, while Cuba’s economy is ranked sixty-fourth globally. The size of Cuba’s economy is also a small fraction of South Korea’s—Cuba’s GDP (USD 111 billion) is about 6 percent of South Korea’s (USD 1,713 billion). For Cuba, economic benefits are an important consideration for improving ties with South Korea. For South Korea, however, links with Cuba have much to do with North Korea.

The Inter-Korean Dynamics Behind Seoul-Havana Relations

After Fidel Castro came to power in Havana in 1959, Cuba became one of North Korea’s staunchest allies. The United States was the leading enemy for both Castro and North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, and the two countries quickly developed close ties. In 1960, Che Guevara, then a minister in the new Castro-led Cuban regime, visited Pyongyang and called North Korea a model for Cuba. In 1968, Raúl Castro, Fidel Castro’s brother and a leading government official, said Cuba and North Korea were “completely identical” on all issues. An indication of their close ties was Cuba being one of the few countries in the world that joined North Korea in boycotting the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Thirty years later, President Miguel Díaz-Canel visited North Korea in 2018 during his initial tour of Cuba’s closest allies.

The relationship with Cuba was particularly important to the Kim regime in North Korea because of its limited international links. For example, in 2023, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at the Cuban embassy building in Washington, DC. There was minimal damage, and the act was largely overlooked by the U.S. media. North Korea, however, was quick to condemn the act as part of an “arrogant and dirty campaign.” The statement reaffirmed that North Korea “will always be in the same trench with the Cuban people to struggle against all forms of terrorism.” Cuba’s Prensa Latina was quick to publicize the North Korean statement of support.

Because few countries are close to North Korea, when South Korea and Cuba unexpectedly announced that the two countries would establish full diplomatic relations, North Korean leaders were shocked and dismayed. It took North Korean officials four days to acknowledge the development—a terse two-sentence statement appeared in an internal Central Committee publication on international affairs. No evaluation or analysis of the development was given; it was merely a brief statement that this had taken place. No more detailed information about the development appeared in the North Korean media.

Less than a month after the surprise announcement was made, the outgoing North Korean ambassador to Cuba paid a farewell visit to Cuban President Díaz-Canel before he returned to Pyongyang. The Cuban leader presented the Cuban Friendship Medal to the North Korean ambassador in recognition of his diplomatic service in Havana. The ambassador had spent over five years in Havana, so his return to North Korea could be considered routine. However, he was recalled to Pyongyang less than a month after the announcement that South Korea and Cuba were establishing diplomatic ties. North Korean diplomats frequently serve long terms abroad, which indicates that the diplomatic recognition was a triggering event for the ambassador’s departure. Six months later, in August 2024, North Korea announced the appointment of a new ambassador to Cuba.

In July 2024, South Korean intelligence officials announced that a North Korean diplomat, Ri Il Gyu, who had been stationed with his family at the North Korean Embassy in Havana, had defected and been resettled in South Korea. South Korean intelligence officials gave few details at that time, but they did make the point that Ri and his family left Havana in November 2023. Though he left before South Korea and Cuba announced the establishment of diplomatic relations, media reports said that Ri was engaged in efforts to stop Cuba from establishing diplomatic ties with South Korea. A decade earlier, Ri was commended by Kim Jong Un for his role in negotiations with Panama, which led to the release of a North Korean ship that was seized for carrying banned missile and fighter jet parts through the Panama Canal. The banned weapons were being transported from Cuba to North Korea.

Clearly, the North Korean government was furious about Cuba’s decision to establish diplomatic ties with South Korea, and that was evident in North Korean media. Suddenly, Cuban diplomats in Pyongyang were ignored by the North Korean media, and reports of foreign diplomats attending high-level events in Pyongyang failed to mention Cuban officials who were in attendance while mentioning officials from other countries. This is a reversal of previous practice.

For over seven months after Seoul and Havana announced the establishment of diplomatic relations, there was no mention of Cuban diplomats in Pyongyang. Finally, in September 2024, North Korean media briefly mentioned a Cuban diplomat in Pyongyang. North Korean media reported that a Cuban military attaché delivered a flower basket and a congratulatory letter to Kim Jong Un on the seventy-sixth anniversary of the founding of the North Korean government. Any mentions of Cuban officials in the North Korean media no longer carry the warm cordiality characteristic of past media attention.

South Korea’s New Relationship with Cuba Highlights North-South Differences in Diplomatic Status

South Korea has extensive diplomatic ties around the world, broad economic and trade relationships, and deep diplomatic engagement in various international organizations. South Korea is one of the few countries that has had one of its diplomats serve as the UN Secretary General and has also served two terms as a member of the UN Security Council. North Korea, in contrast, has played a much more limited role in the United Nations, and its military threats and human rights abuses have been frequent topics of discussion in the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and the UN Human Rights Council.

For North Korea, its relationship with Cuba was important because it implied broad and unique diplomatic ties, which were even more noteworthy due to South Korea’s lack of a formal relationship with Cuba. The opening of South Korea-Cuba relations underlines South Korea’s international prominence and North Korea’s far more limited international status.

With the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Cuba, South Korean diplomatic missions are now located in 130 countries around the world. An additional sixty-seven countries have diplomatic relations with South Korea but do not have a resident embassy in Seoul. These countries are served by South Korean embassies in nearby countries.

The number of diplomatic missions in North Korea is much more modest. Currently, only twenty-two countries have an embassy in Pyongyang. In the last decade, ten embassies have closed operations in North Korea. Some of the embassies in North Korea provide services for citizens of other countries through mutual agreements. For example, the United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea, but the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang provides consular services for American citizens in North Korea. A number of other countries have similar arrangements.

In addition to the modest number of embassies currently resident in Pyongyang, another fifty-one countries have diplomatic relations with North Korea, and their ambassadors and embassy staff in China are also accredited to North Korea. Two countries have a similar arrangement with their embassies in Tokyo.

Conclusion

Diplomatic presence abroad is largely a reflection of economic influence. In the past few decades, South Korea has seen remarkable economic growth, led by its export-focused industrialization. It is the fourth-largest economy in Asia and the twelfth-largest economy in the world. Despite periodic economic problems, such as the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, the South Korean economy has remained remarkably resilient.

In 2023, South Korea’s GDP reached KRW 2,401 trillion, but North Korea’s economy was only measured at about KRW 40.2 trillion. South Korea has roughly double the population of North Korea, but its economy is roughly sixty times larger.

The opening of full diplomatic ties between Seoul and Havana is a clear reflection of the current economic and political realities on the Korean Peninsula.

 

Robert King is a Non-Resident Distinguished Fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America. The views expressed here are the author’s alone.

Photo from Pexels.

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