Koreans in Africa

In the past, North Korea ran several military and civil assistance programmes to some of Africa's more radical states, including Guinea, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Mali and Tanzania. North Korea, in return, was able to gain diplomatic recognition and other leverage; they were successful in ensuring South Korea was unable to join the Non-Aligned Movement. For Egypt, the relationship was especially close; North Korean pilots flew Egyptian fighters in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and Egypt exported scud missiles to North Korea. Egypt even had diplomatic relations established with Israel before it had relations with South Korea.[5]

North Korea was also involved in several armed insurgency movements in Angola, Rhodesia and in the Seychelles, and provided support to the African National Congress and South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO). In 1984, 3,000 North Korean military advisers were dispatched to Angola, and later were reportedly engaged in combat operations with the People's Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA).[6] Around the same time there were some North Koreans in Lesotho involved in training for the Youth League of the Basotho National Party's Vincent Makhele faction, but they were expelled due to pressure from South Africa in early 1986.[7]

In the 1990s and beyond, as governments in Africa became more pragmatic and South Korea's economic position became clearly superior to that of the North's, North Korea's influence in Africa declined.

During the wave of Korean labour migration to the Arab world in the 1970s and 1980s, many Koreans went to Arab countries of North Africa, including Libya, and to a lesser extent, Egypt and Sudan. Though Libya did not receive its first South Korean workers until 1977, it was the only Arab country which experienced consistent growth in the number of Korean workers between 1981 and 1985. By 1985 it had already become the Arab world's second most popular destination, with 23,138 arrivals from South Korea. In total, from 1977 until 1985, 103,953 South Koreans went to Libya.[8] The Korean community in Nigeria consists of 550 construction engineers from South Korean construction companies Daewoo and Hyundai Heavy Industries, 240 local residents, and 10 missionaries sent by Christian churches in South Korea.[2] There is also a small population of roughly 200 Koreans in Botswana, largely formed by employees of South Korean automobile manufacturers; 154 live in the capital Gaborone.[3] In late 2008, there were media reports that roughly 30 or 40 immigration brokers in Seoul's Gangnam-gu were helping South Korean parents to obtain permanent residency in Mali and other African countries so that they could enroll their children in international schools at home.[9]

• Hanlon, Joseph (1986), Beggar Your Neighbours: apartheid power in Southern Africa, Indiana, United States: Indiana University Press, ISBN 0-253-33131-5
• Owoeye, Jide (July 1991), "The Metamorphosis of North Korea's African Policy" (PDF), Asian Survey, 31 (7): 630–645, doi:10.2307/2645381, JSTOR 2645381
• Seok, Hyunho (1991), "Korean migrant workers to the Middle East", in Gunatilleke, Godfrey (ed.), Migration to the Arab World: Experience of Returning Migrants, United Nations University Press, pp. 56–103, ISBN 92-808-0745-5
• Yap, Melanie; Man, Dianne (1996), Colour, Confusion & Concessions: The History of the Chinese in South Africa, Hong Kong University Press, ISBN 962-209-424-4
• Overseas Korean Educational Institutions, National Institute for International Education Development, Republic of Korea, 2007, archived from the original on 2007-09-30, retrieved 2009-11-27
• "중동/아프리카 재외동포현황 (Middle East/Africa Overseas Compatriots Present Status)". Overseas Korean Foundation. 2005. Archived from the original on 2007-09-27. Retrieved 2007-05-13.