In a quiet Pretoria neighborhood sits a charming residential house, guarded by stone statuary and topped with a bright teal roof. This is the DPRK Embassy to South Africa, North Korea’s command center for much of its activity across the African continent.

Much of what the embassy does is likely aimed at raising illicit cash for the Kim Jong Un regime, experts told NK Pro. NK Pro contacted the DPRK Embassy through phone and email for right of reply, but did not receive an immediate response.

“The embassy… [is] a hub of regional illicit activities typical of DPRK embassies,” said Neil Watts, the former South African member of the United Nations’ Panel of Experts, which records sanctions violations. Watts listed arms and fishing contracts with Mozambique, military related infrastructure and statue construction in Namibia, rhino poaching rings, and statues, military training and illicit minerals in Zimbabwe.

One 2015 incident brought renewed attention to illegal activity linked to the DPRK’s Pretoria Embassy. A North Korean diplomat based there was arrested in Mozambique with some $100,000 in cash and close to five kilograms of rhino horn, according to an extensive report on North Korean criminal activities in Africa published by the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

But DPRK-South Africa relations were initially borne out of solidarity against colonialism and oppression, say experts. In the 1970-80s, North Korea backed Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) and other anti-apartheid opposition groups with cash, guns and military expertise.

“The anti-apartheid battle was at the heart of all southern African liberation struggles,” said Tycho van der Hoog, a PhD candidate at the African Studies Centre at Leiden University. Kim Il Sung’s support for these liberation movements generated goodwill for North Korea that persists today, he said.

Benjamin Young, assistant professor at Dakota State University and author of a recently published book on North Korea’s outreach to the developing world, explained that North Korea was an active supporter of African decolonization movements in the 20th century.

A major part of North Korea’s outreach strategy was exporting its “Juche” ideology rather than goods, Young told the NK News Podcast in a recent interview.

South Africa — along with many postcolonial African governments that North Korea supported — may have allowed Pyongyang to establish an embassy in the country as a way of thanks, Young suggested.

According to South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, North Korea opened its embassy in Pretoria in 2002.

Data shows that the embassy — opened shortly after a period of immense economic hardship in North Korea — did not generate a sustained trade increase. The embassy’s lethargy in promoting legal trade led to just $5 million worth of North Korean goods exported to South Africa in 2015. South African goods to the DPRK peaked at just over $220 million in 2010 before dropping sharply, ITC Trade Map data shows. By comparison, South Africa’s total exports that year totaled more than $82 billion.

For its part, South Africa does not run an embassy in Pyongyang. North Korean affairs are managed under the portfolio of a single diplomat at South Africa’s Beijing embassy, according to the embassy’s public relations officer.

In light of the U.N. ban on North Koreans working overseas and Pyongyang’s strict COVID-19 lockdown, the Pretoria embassy’s public face has shifted to cultural activities. The embassy was involved in an exhibition of North Korean art in Port Elizabeth in 2019, and experts say it has liaised with local “Juche” study groups and cultivated other networks.

“The ties between South Africa and the DPRK are best understood through the lens of the ANC, which has ruled South Africa since independence and feels in some way indebted to the North Korean regime,” van der Hoog said. “They remember that North Korea supported them in a time when most of the free world backed apartheid.”

Edited by Arius Derr. Chad O’Carroll contributed to this report.

Correction (May 6, 2021 at 10:55 a.m. KST): A previous version of this article misstated the total value of South Africa’s exports in 2010.