Need a North Korean Missile? Call the Cairo Embassy
Egypt has purchased North Korean weapons and allowed North Korean diplomats to use their Cairo embassy
as a base for military sales across the region, American and United Nations officials say.
United Nations inspectors and North Korean defectors say the Cairo embassy has become a bustling arms bazaar for covert sales of North Korean missiles
and cut-price Soviet-era military hardware across a band of North Africa and the Middle East.
In response to questions about the United Nations finding, the State Information Service said this past week: "The relevant Egyptian authorities have undertaken all the necessary measures in relation to the North Korean ship in full transparency
and under the supervision" of United Nations officials.
After the Trump administration slashed aid last summer, Egyptian officials said they were cutting military ties to North Korea, reducing the size of its Cairo embassy
and monitoring the activities of North Korean diplomats.
But now the statue has come to signify another aspect of Egypt’s ties to North Korea: a furtive trade in illegal weapons
that has upset President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s otherwise cozy relationship with the United States, set off a painful cut in military aid and drawn unremitting scrutiny from United Nations inspectors.
In addition, Washington worries that North Korea, a longtime supplier of ballistic missile technology to Egypt, is still supplying
missile parts, said Andrea Berger, a North Korea specialist at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
In November 2016, the United States and the United Nations sanctioned the ambassador, Pak Chun-il, describing
him as an agent of North Korea’s largest arms company, the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation.