The story of the first North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung, swindling 1,000 Volvo cars from Sweden is one of the lesser-known episodes of the Cold War. Almost half a century later, the Asian state is still the largest debtor country of the Scandinavian. A good part of this debt was contracted as a result of the unpaid invoice by the grandfather of the current leader Kim Jong Un, when he ordered a thousand vehicles from the Swedish brand. It was 144; Robust, durable model, rectilinear design and Nordic engineering. Twice a year, the Swedish public agency EKN reminds Pyongyang of the debt with added interest. The sum of 2022 amounted to 3.1 trillion crowns (about 300 million euros). It does not appear that the Kim Jong Un regime is, for now, willing to liquidate him. And yet, default has brought out a special relationship.
The thousand Volvos were shipped in the mid-1970s to be part of Pyongyang’s fledgling fleet of taxis. At the time, Sweden did not know that it was entering into a ruinous business. And despite everything, and against all odds, the million-dollar debt has allowed the Nordic country to establish the most fluid diplomatic relations that North Korea has maintained with any other country in the West.
After the end of the Korean War in 1953, Sweden became part of the Supervisory Commission for Neutral Nations that ensured respect for the armistice signed between the two Koreas. Sweden’s status as a neutral country during the Cold War certainly helped it gain the trust of the Korean regime. In addition, in the political context of the seventies, the Nordic country was in deep disagreement with the invasion of the United States when the Vietnam War broke out. And not only this, the then Prime Minister Olof Palme also gave political asylum to several young Americans who refused to go to war, which led Washington to threaten on more than one occasion to cut diplomatic ties with Sweden.
Undoubtedly, what also favored the rapprochement with Sweden were the promising economic prospects that experts foresaw in North Korea, a country with infinite possibilities for foreign investment to rebuild it after the war with the South. To do this, the regime needed the technology and machinery that Sweden was willing to sell. Former Swedish diplomat Erik Cornell described the city of Pyongyang this way when he first arrived in the winter of 1975, when he opened the first Western embassy in the capital: “It was an empty, snowy, windy and cold country, when we arrived we started everything from scratch” . Surely the Korean regime was confident that the high prices of exporting its minerals (gold, lead or zinc, among others) would allow them to pay off the debt. However, the economic optimism created around North Korea, another bubble, soon faded and the bills were left unpaid.
This was by no means the end of relations between the two countries. Since 1995, the Swedish embassy has officially acted as a protected power for US interests. Thus, on numerous occasions Stockholm has acted as a channel of communication between Washington and Pyongyang, always from the shadows. The last time it was recorded was in 2018, under the Trump administration, when the historic summits with Kim Jong Un in Singapore and Hanoi were prepared. Despite the complete discretion and secrecy of the Swedish diplomats, after the meeting the fundamental role played by the Scandinavians in the release of three North Americans imprisoned in North Korea became known, a condition that the US had set to hold the meeting.
After Sweden’s request to join NATO and the complete isolation of North Korea due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems that relations between the two countries are almost extinguished. Other experts say that after years of diplomatic relations, the North Korean regime continues to need Sweden as a channel of communication with the West.
While in Sweden, there are testimonies that claim to have seen Volvo 144s driving around Pyongyang, dilapidated and creaking over the years. Cars are the story of a time when the geopolitical tableau was very different from today. But as long as the debt continues, this story has not ended.
