Choe Hui Chol, a senior North Korean diplomat who has served as a Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs since January 2017, has been appointed the country’s ambassador to India, state media reported this week.

In a dispatch on Monday carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), it was reported that Choe was appointed by “decree of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly.”

India and North Korea have long enjoyed relatively close ties — a relationship the Indian government was forced to defend in 2017 amid a campaign of pressure by the U.S.

Those ties have in the past