
Wanna Do Business in Pyongyang? Call Alejandro Cao de Benós - heyiamlukas
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-05-01/wanna-do-business-in-pyongyang-call-north-korea-s-guy-in-spain
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AlexTrask
This man apeared some times in the spanish TV. He avoids questions about
censorship and critic questions. It's just regime propaganda

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oarabbus_
By the context I am understanding he spouts NK regime propaganda to the
Spanish people?

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kace91
Yup (I’m a Spaniard as well).

Take this with a grain of salt as I’m talking from memory, but I think he’s
acted as a middleman with North Korea to set up trips to the country for
tourism, including for some Spanish journalists that were taken through very
controlled routes. I remember the guy kept talking about how the North Koreans
don’t mess around and so the people should be careful, about how great the Kim
family is and about how proud he is to be so well considered by the regime.

I remember wondering if it’s all just a charade for him that allows him to
have contact with North Korea (as in, him being some sort of agent), if he
just found his business niche, of if he’s an idiot who drank the kool aid
because he likes to feel he’s important.

As an aside, I was impressed watching those documentaries by how many North
Korean officials spoke perfect Spanish without any trace of an accent.
Apparently some of them had lived and studied in Cuba for some time.

Edit: I found it, the documentary is called 'En tierra hostil', from 2015.
It's currently only legally available under subscription from A3player, a
streaming service from a private Spanish TV channel, but it might be viewable
in other sites.

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jacobush
The Soviet Union used to have diplomats and "attaches" who spoke pitch perfect
Swedish.

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riffraff
If you haven't seen it, The Propaganda Game[0] featuring this guy is a
wonderful documentary

[0]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4206218/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4206218/)

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mportela
+1. I was on my way to recommend this documentary.

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Ididntdothis
“He rejects all questions about extrajudicial killings or humanitarian
atrocities as propaganda: “The media is often reporting that we execute
people, which is not true,” he claims.”

Interesting article. I often wonder about the mindset of people who deny the
obvious facts. Does he really believe it or is he just cynical?

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DavidVoid
>I often wonder about the mindset of people who deny the obvious facts. Does
he really believe it or is he just cynical?

This just made me think of Baghdad Bob so I looked him up and apparently he is
still alive and allegedly living in the UAE. It would be interesting to hear
what he thinks now of all the obvious lies he told almost two decades ago.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
> It would be interesting to hear what he thinks now of all the obvious lies
> he told almost two decades ago.

“If only I was in America, then with my talents I would have had an awesome
career in law, politics, or business.”

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DavidVoid
I'm a bit surprised that companies are even doing business with North Korea
considering how unreliable they have been in the past. In the 70s, when they
at least seemed to be on par with South Korea in terms of development [1],
they imported mining equipment and 1,000 cars from Sweden but never fully paid
for them [2].

I guess the risk is worth it for some companies/individuals if they're only
spending a few thousand dollars to potentially save many more.

> _“Let’s say you’re making a cartoon, and you are outsourcing the work. So
> you go to Romania, because you know it’s very cheap.” But the Romanian
> company knows of an even cheaper option. Its representative flies to
> Pyongyang and makes a deal for the same work at half the cost—and then gets
> 50% of the fee without employing anyone. “This has happened,” he says. He
> will not name movies. Nor popular video games. North Korean labor is also
> behind websites and crypto, he says. The shadow hands of globally sanctioned
> socialist labor are all around us._

The Onion was right all along [3].

And I know this is a pretty stereotypical nitpick, but I wish they (both the
author and Cao de Benós) would be more specific and refer to DPRK's ideology
as Juche [4], instead of just calling it socialism. Ignoring nuances in
political ideologies just makes them more difficult to discuss.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_North_Korea#/media/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_North_Korea#/media/File:Two_koreas_gdp_1950_1977.jpg)

[2]
[https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/04/547390622/...](https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/04/547390622/how-1-000-volvos-
ended-up-in-north-korea-and-made-a-diplomatic-difference)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaZ57Bn4pQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaZ57Bn4pQ)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche)

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strategarius
Which proves ancient statement "Greed and cowardliness rule the world". I'm
sure, there are people even in Western democracies, who perfectly aware where
their outsource projects comes from. Not to say about China and Russia - they
use slave labor of North Koreans for decades. Slaves from North Korea built
stadiums for World Cup 2018 [0] in Russia. Everyone there knew about it (I'm
Russian as well), there was plenty of evidence. Did anyone boycott the games?

[0] [https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/3205842/russia-2018-world-
cup...](https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/3205842/russia-2018-world-cup-stadium-
being-built-using-north-korean-slaves-on-45p-an-hour/)

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neonate
[https://archive.md/Khk4a](https://archive.md/Khk4a)

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saagarjha
Some discussion on the events at the embassy:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22779746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22779746)

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kick
Thanks for linking to this discussion; I missed it when it happened.

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tdeck
For more about this guy I highly recommend watching the documentary Friends of
Kim in which he plays a starring role. You can even find it on YouTube. TL;DR
he and a bunch of "friends of the DPRK" went to NK to participate in a parade
and shout "Yankee Go Home" but then he started acting suspicious and turned on
other members of the group.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C76HqPaA6kw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C76HqPaA6kw)

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ecuaflo
paywall :(

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pmachinery
If you have Firefox, open Reader View (CTRL+ALT+R) and reload. (Assuming it's
the same issue I had, viewing in a private window.)

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morsch
Or disable JS, e.g. the </> button in uBlock. That disables images as well,
which is mostly a downside.

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changoplatanero
Just read the opening two paragraphs. Whoever wrote that is totally clueless
about how the Mormon church does its missionary assignments.

