A North Korean construction team left behind a treasure trove of personal items, books, contracts and other things after disappearing from a compound in Namibia’s capital city of Windhoek four years ago.

The compound originally housed North Koreans from the Mansudae Overseas Projects (MOP), the international arm of Pyongyang’s Mansudae Arts Studio. 

Namibia is one of over a dozen countries North Korea’s MOP is reported to have worked in, earning hundreds of millions of dollars for the Kim Jong Un regime. 

The U.N. sanctioned the overseas work outfit in 2017, but MOP may have continued to operate in Namibia under an assumed Chinese business name.

“They [the North Koreans] were nice neighbours, if occasionally a little rowdy,” said neighbour Heidi Zimmer. But since they left so suddenly, the house has become an eyesore and constant head-ache for the local neighbourhood watch, she said.

The 1.8-hectare walled compound was complete with offices, communal kitchens, bathrooms and living spaces for up to 100 North Koreans. Today, most everything at the site has been vandalized, broken or looted.

While the lower ranks lived in spartan, communal conditions at the industrial compound in what amounted to a roomed-off steel shed, the higher-ranking North Koreans had a separate corporate headquarters — much larger and luxurious, complete with a swimming pool.

Some two months after the MOP crew mysteriously disappeared in late Sep. 2017, their equipment and machinery at the nearby Lafrenz industrial park, including several large trucks, also vanished overnight.

Curiously though, earlier in May a Namibian media site reported that MOP held a contract until July 2020 to construct an open-air market for the same neighborhood where their abandoned compound sits.

According to the report, the approximately $13 million contract was originally awarded in 2014 to the Chinese state-owned construction company Jiangsu Zhengtai and a well-connected Namibian firm known for fronting for Chinese-related interests.

The market project was never completed, and no comment could be obtained from the Namibian Ministry of International Cooperation about the contract.

Inside the compound

Edited by Arius Derr