{"id":5941,"date":"2026-06-08T16:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T23:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941"},"modified":"2026-06-08T19:29:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T02:29:55","slug":"my-work-on-north-korean-monume-ts-in-africa-cited-in-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941","title":{"rendered":"My Work on North Korean Statues in Africa Cited in DC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
The North Korean-made Derg monument towers above Churchhill Avenue in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. \u00a92011 Derek Henry Flood<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

New York-<\/strong> My field research on North Korean monuments across post-colonial Africa was cited by the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea in their report titled I<\/a>llicit: North Korea\u2019s Evolving Operations to Earn Hard Currency<\/em><\/a> by Sheena Chestnut Greitens<\/a>, a Non-Resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ruling Kim dynasty, burdened by decades of sanctions, has had to look far beyond the West to export labor alongside soft power initiatives like monument building across the African continent. I worked on a sort of happenstance story on the phenomenon of various African regimes importing hulking socialist-realist monuments created for them by the Mansudae Overseas Projects in Pyongyang. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went to Ethiopia some 15 years ago primarily to visit the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela in the northern Amhara Region. This of course meant spending some time in Addis Ababa, the country’s bustling capital and transport hub. Growing up in the United States in the era of Band Aid\/Live Aid and We Are the World, the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s lingered over my boyhood. The roots of the famine we little understood by Western publics broadly speaking.I needed to see the place for myself and after a troubled reporting trip to Bahrain, sort of fled to there. Once I arrived in the capital, I could resist digging around for stories in part to subsidize my Lalibela excursion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I was in Addis Ababa working on a story about China constructing the then new African Union headquarters, I f inadvertently became aware of North Korean activities in Africa, One afternoon I went to check out a massive Marxist obelisk replete with statues commemorating the valor of Cuban soldiers that Fidel Castro had sent to help Ethiopian forces turn the tide against invading Somali troops attempting capture the ethnic-Somali Ogaden region in the 1970s. It was an internecine conflict between dueling Marxist-Leninist states in the Horn of Africa that forced both the Soviets and the Cubans to pick a side. They chose Ethiopia after ultimately decided the Siad Barre government in Mogadishu was the aggressor which was more in line with Soviet ideology in that era that was a big brother protector state powerful enough to defend its little brother allies with Cuba as its useful proxy. In the 1980s the Kim Il-sung regime gifted this giant “struggle” monument to the military junta in Addis known as the Derg. in soft power projection move disguised in the spirit of a common ideological brotherhood <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time North Korean was supported economically by the gradually declining Soviet Union which helped keep its flimsy command economy propped up. In this context, Pyongyang was in a position of relative strength to where it could donate such things too its third world allies. After Soviet communism imploded in late 1991, Pyongyang had to monetize this business to bring in the hard currency it so desperately needed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The following year I found myself working in Bamako, Mali after weapons from the chaotic revolution in Libya had seeped across its southern border into the feebly governed states of the vast Sahel region. I began to notice an array of monuments that, lo and behold, were purchased from Mansudae in Pyongyang. This led me down a rabbit hole of discovery that these statues were in capitals all over the continent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
“Statue of the military” at a traffic circle in Bamako, Mali sold by North Korea to the Malian government. \u00a92012 Derek Henry Flood<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York- My field research on North Korean monuments across post-colonial Africa was cited by the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea in their report titled Illicit: North Korea\u2019s Evolving Operations to Earn Hard Currency by Sheena Chestnut…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[869],"class_list":["post-5941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-north-korea"],"yoast_head":"\nMy Work on North Korean Statues in Africa Cited in DC - The War Diaries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My Work on North Korean Statues in Africa Cited in DC - The War Diaries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"New York- My field research on North Korean monuments across post-colonial Africa was cited by the Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea in their report titled Illicit: North Korea\u2019s Evolving Operations to Earn Hard Currency by Sheena Chestnut…Read more →\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The War Diaries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-08T23:25:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-06-09T02:29:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/6F42E0A4-4473-4F9D-9D2C-4564D73F2400_1_201_a-scaled.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"derekhenryflood\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"derekhenryflood\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"derekhenryflood\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/#\/schema\/person\/df810a7fcaa4910f9fc2513a3de68ff8\"},\"headline\":\"My Work on North Korean Statues in Africa Cited in DC\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-08T23:25:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-06-09T02:29:55+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941\"},\"wordCount\":603,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/#\/schema\/person\/df810a7fcaa4910f9fc2513a3de68ff8\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/6F42E0A4-4473-4F9D-9D2C-4564D73F2400_1_201_a-scaled.jpeg\",\"keywords\":[\"North Korea\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/the-war-diaries.com\/?p=5941\",\"name\":\"My Work on North Korean Statues in Africa Cited in DC - 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