North Korea Owes Sweden €300m for 1,000 Stolen Volvos and every 6 months Sweden sends them reminders. (article)
Sweden was one of the first to seize on the opportunity. The Stockholm and Pyongyang ties in the early 1970s arose out of a rare convergence of leftist and industrialist interest: local socialist groups wanted Sweden to formally recognise the new communist state, and businessmen wanted to exploit the region’s nascent mining industry.
For Kim Il-sung and comrades, the western initiative represented an important step towards North Korea’s fulfillment as a global force to be reckoned with. It was no coincidence that journalist Lovisa Lamm Nordenskiöld and former diplomat Erik Cornell, two of the main chroniclers of the short-lived trade adventure, both settled on the word “paradise” when describing North Korea’s self-image during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Given the nation’s success, that was simply the only word that would do, according to the propaganda machine.
Lamm Nordenskiöld suggests that the nation soon felt compelled to legitimise this edenic self-image with grand industrial projects and architectural marvels, often with little regard for the costs. “There’s this disconnect between reality and the North Korean imagination,” she says.
Small wonder that a regime so impressed with itself soon developed expensive taste. “Inside the 144 GL you sit on leather,” reads the unambiguous 1970s marketing material that Volvo likely sent its North Korean buyers. Together with contemporary industry giants Atlas Copco and Kockums, Volvo was one of the first European companies to foray into the North Korean market, and promptly received an order for 1,000 vehicles, the first of which were delivered in 1974. But less than a year later, the venture blew up at a Swedish-Korean industrial trade fair in Pyongyang, where it suddenly became clear that the Kim regime wasn’t actually paying for the goods it was importing – not even the machines it ordered for the expo. The bills were simply piling up.
(CavemanCircus.com)
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