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.
The logo of Mansudae Overseas Projects (MOP) still stands inside the compound | Image: NK News
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.
An outside view of where the compound looks out onto a private pool, likely only available to higher-ranking North Koreans | Image: John Grobler
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
A kitchen in the ransacked lounge that served as the MOP’s managing director’s office is dirty and rotten today | Image: NK NewsIn what once was the MD’s bedroom lies empty whisky bottles, human feces and a pile of dried-out material that appeared to be kratom, a kind of opiate | Image: NK NewsA guide to English-language construction terms left on a table with various other North Korean products | Image: NK NewsAn assortment of other North Korean books and language instruction materials left behind | Image: NK NewsThe manager appeared to have visited a duty-free shop shortly before MOP’s overnight disappearance in late September 2017, judging by the boxes of luxury products left behind in his cupboard: a Mont Blanc pen, an iPhone, a Samsung tablet, various aftershaves, amongst others | Image: NK NewsAn abandoned North Korean flag sits on a table alongside a set of keys and mountain of documents | Image: NK NewsA North Korean calendar lies on a table beneath a locally-produced Namibian one | Image: NK NewsStorage that appears to have been cleaned out upon the North Koreans’ departure — or subsequently looted | Image: NK NewsInside an abandoned bedroom at the former North Korean compound | Image: NK NewsThe once-neat garden is now completely covered with weeds and trash. MOP’s abandoned buildings are slowly looted for building materials for constructing shacks in the nearby semi-formal townships of Katutura. | Image: NK NewsFrom the front gate, the electric fencing hangs in tatters, all windows of the front-facing building are broken, and even the two cement lions that once lined the gate are now gone | Image: NK NewsInside, doors have been ripped from their hinges, desks and chairs are ruined, and toilets are anything but usable | Image: NK NewsA view of the compound that was used to accommodate North Korean laborers at the facility | Image: NK News
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.
John Grobler is a Namibia-based investigative reporter who has been reporting on the interface between natural resource exploitation and organized crime in Africa for past 25 years. He is a past winner of several international media awards, including a CNN award for business reporting and is an Alfred Friendly Fellowship alumni.