While France is just one of two European countries yet to formally recognize North Korea, a number of groups there have been hard working to change this point since the late 1960s.

Indeed, formal recognition of the North Korean state has for some been a major objective for some time: Former President François Mitterrand (who toured North Korea in 1981) actually promised recognition to Pyongyang before he was elected.

But that was more than 30 years ago.

Today, even with the opening of a French Cooperation Bureau in Pyongyang in 2011, there has been little progress in improving France-DPRK ties, as the Quai d’Orsay (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) officially insists that Pyongyang must improve its human rights situation – or denuclearize – before any official recognition can be considered.

As it is, the community of French North Korea watchers is a very narrow circle, with few scholars showing interest beyond nuclear issues and even fewer interested in the North specifically. Of the few that do follow North Korea, the most well known is the controversial co-author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang, Pierre Rigoulot, who used to be a member of a Stalinist-Maoist political organization but, like many French Maoists, abruptly became very conservative, anti-communist and pro-Washington.

But not all of those who follow North Korea in France are today hostile to Pyongyang; a few groups support a friendlier approach – even if they are not actual supporters of Juche ideology itself.

Notably the international Korean Friendship Association (KFA), headed by Alejandro Cao de Benós, does not yet have a formal branch in France. From time to time some express interest in starting an active KFA organization in France, but no formal meetings or activities have yet been organized.

FROM THE OBSCURE…

Unsurprisingly, the “pro-DPRK” movement in France is mostly left-leaning, but it does include some fairly high-profile figures amongst its members – some of whom are even established in traditional political circles. And although these groups are insignificant in membership, there are relatively large organizations such as the France-Korea Friendship Association (AAFC), who are very active.

Two obscure – and unofficial – “political parties” share almost the same name: the French Juche Party and the French Juchean Party (formerly the French Juchean Communist Party), groups that likely hide the same people. Active only on the internet (mostly on Twitter), their most “famous” communiqués have included calls for a French invasion of Monaco and for French citizens to vote for far-right politicians such as Marine Le Pen.

Another obscure group is the French Juche Study group that has maintained contact with Pyongyang since leader Jean-Marie Lambret toured North Korea with the group in 2007. Furthermore, there is also the European Society for the Study of the Juche Idea, headed by University Professor Edmond Jouve, who participated in the International Juche Idea Congress in Pyongyang in April 2012. These small groups hold little weight in the French media.

…TO COMMUNIST ‘MAINSTREAM’

Despite the insignificance of the smaller support groups, some relatively mainstream political groups in France do take interest in the political situation in North Korea, even if they do not toe the Pyongyang party line.

Although the French Communist Party (PCF) – which has more than 120,000 members – severed its ties with the Workers Party of Korea (WKP) in 1995, factions still remain sympathetic to Pyongyang.

Under the chairmanship of Robert Hue (who still holds office as a senator and heads the center-left MUP) the PCF decided in 1995 to transition from communist ideals to a more traditional social democrat approach. However, many important party members did not welcome the diversion and started “satellite parties” for committed Marxist-Leninists. As a result, there are actually more than 30 communist political parties in France, and some – a minority – are actively involved in France-DPRK cooperation.

North Koreans diplomats in Paris (including their UNESCO ambassador and the DPRK general delegation in France) are known to have established contacts with the French Revolutionary Communist Union (URCF) and with some members inside the French Communist Resistance Pole (PRCF). This latter group is perhaps the biggest satellite organization of the PCF. Both organizations sent condolences to the Workers Party of Korea (WPK) when Kim Jong Il died and routinely celebrate the anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth.

Although they are small organizations, these communist-oriented parties sometimes involve high-profile politicians.

Maurice Cukierman, for instance, is both a URCF member and leading force in the more mainstream AAFC . His daughter, Cécile Cukierman, was elected senator in 2011, as running mate of Jean-Claude Frécon, socialist senator and head of the France-DPRK parliamentary contact and study group.

Even some people inside the ruling center-left Parti Socialiste have had close connections to North Korea: just a few months ago NK News revealed that former parliamentarian Jean-Marie Cambacérès’s daughter Jayadevi spent a week in the Songdowon Summer Camp on the North Korean East Coast.

KOREA FOCUSED ACTIVITIES

If it appears that there is much North Korea-focused activity in and around the French Senate, it is mostly because communist ex-senators André Aubry and Bernard Hugo established a France-DPRK parliamentary contact group more than 30 years ago – and still advocate for stronger French-DPRK ties inside the France-Korea Friendship Association (AAFC), where they are respectively President and Vice-President.

It is important to note that the AAFC is not comparable to the Korea Friendship Association (KFA).

Although their ultimate goal is to “qualify the public debate on Korean affairs by taking Pyongyang’s views into account,” they are definitely opposed to blind support for Pyongyang. In contrast, the KFA has actually tried several times to set up a formal organization in France, but the AAFC has strongly opposed this, arguing to North Korean diplomats that their image would be more of a liability in the media.

Despite being founded under the name AAFC Paris-Pyongyang in 1969 by communist writer and journalist Jean Kanapa and Raymond Lavigne, the organization known today as the AAFC has never restricted itself to communist activism and was always very keen to attract people from different political movements. Vice-President Benoit Quennedey, for instance, studied at the École Nationale d’Administration, France’s most prestigious public affairs Grande École – and was elected national secretary of the center-left Parti Radical de Gauche.

As a matter of fact, Louis Terrenoire, a former secretary of major Résistance organizations in Nazi-occupied France and a former Information Minister under conservative president Charles De Gaulle, became president of AAFC Paris-Pyongyang in 1977. Tourists visiting the Juche Tower in Pyongyang can actually see a plaque with his name in broad red letters, sent as a gift to North Korea by the man himself.

Even if the AAFC has not been known as ‘Paris-Pyongyang’ since 1989, it still officially advocates for the peaceful reunification of Korea and publishes regularly on South Korea’s pro-democratization movements (notably on the Lee Sok-ki affair). Sen. Jean-Claude Frécon still calls them “a pro-Pyongyang organization” and the group continues to organize trips to North Korea almost every year, mainly to attend official celebrations.

Besides a very active blog and some events organized with humanitarian NGOs, academics or North Korean diplomats in Paris, some members of of the AAFC publish a variety of books – in French – about North Korea, including Vice-President Benoit Quennedey and university professor Robert Charvin.

Of course, these books have no chances of becoming best-sellers, but there are among the very few books on North Korea being written outside of English in Europe (and French people rarely read English). For instance, Quennedey’s book North Korean Economy (L’Économie de la Corée du Nord) was the first economy-focused book on North Korea ever published in French.

STATUS QUO PREVAILS

Despite Mitterand’s 1981 pledge to officially recognize North Korea, the election of President François Hollande in 2012 – a politician who used to work in Mitterrand’s cabinet – has not been considered as an important opportunity to improve France – DPRK ties.

Widely considered as a rather “conservative” member of the Socialist Party, French foreign policy under Hollande seems to be even more African-centred than before with little interests in Asian affairs beyond bilateral economic relations with major powers such as China or Japan. Positioning closely to Washington in terms of its foreign policy, there is little chance that France’s Pro-Pyongyang groups will have much luck at influencing Parisian rapprochement with Pyongyang.

While France is just one of two European countries yet to formally recognize North Korea, a number of groups there have been hard working to change this point since the late 1960s. Indeed, formal recognition of the North Korean state has for some been a major objective for some time: Former President François Mitterrand (who