North Korea started tie with Burmese Junta

North Korean envoy takes up Myanmar post

YANGON, Myanmar — North Korea's first ambassador to Myanmar after a 24-year diplomatic rupture has taken up his post, state media reported Saturday.

Myanmar and North Korea — both Asian pariah states due to their reputations for repression — agreed to resume diplomatic ties when North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Yong Il visited the military-ruled nation in April.

Myanmar and North Korea severed their diplomatic relations in 1983, after North Korean commandos carried out a bombing during a visit to Myanmar by South Korea's then-President Chun Doo-hwan. Chun was unhurt, but 21 other people died, including four South Korean Cabinet ministers.

The countries' relations have warmed in recent years as Pyongyang has become a supplier to Myanmar's military. But both countries have chilly relations with the West.

In September, Myanmar's ruling junta violently crushed peaceful street protests and detained thousands of people, sparking international outrage. On Friday, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a U.N. human rights investigator, said he knew of at least 31 people killed in the crackdown, but that he suspected the toll was far higher.

Meanwhile, recent progress on nuclear disarmament in North Korea has improved the country's relationship with the international community, though it has long been isolated from the West and cut off from much of the world. North Korea agreed in February to disable its nuclear programs in return for energy aid and other benefits.

The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper said the new ambassador, Kim Sok Chol, 52, presented his credentials to Senior Gen. Than Shwe at a ceremony Friday in the capital, Naypyitaw.

Details of North Korea-Myanmar dealings are hard to verify because the two nations are among the world's most secretive.

Researchers cite impoverished North Korea as a source of last resort for arms buyers who cannot purchase them elsewhere. Most Western nations embargo arms sales to Myanmar due to its poor human rights record and the junta's failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government.

The Arms Transfer Project of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute claims Pyongyang delivered 16 large artillery pieces to Myanmar in 1999. Reports in publications such as Jane's Intelligence Review and the Far Eastern Economic Review suggest much more extensive dealings.