North Korea's public relations man is a Spaniard with a tough job - by Zach Campbell

Meet Alejandro Cao de Benós, the only non-Korean employee of North Korea’s foreign ministry. The Spaniard is taking the PR message of North Korea's greatness across Europe.

Cao de Benós is North Korea’s voice to the West.  Jolly, tan, and stout, he was born in Tarragona, Spain to a family with aristocratic roots. He has often said that it was his lifelong dream to join the North Korean revolution, and claims to be the only non-North Korean to ever work for the government in an official capacity since it changed a law to allow specific foreigners to take government posts. Before serving as spokesperson to North Korea he worked as an IT consultant in Pamplona and in the US.

In 2000 he founded the Korean Friendship Association, a worldwide network of sympathizers and supporters who lobby and speak on behalf of the North Korean government. Though it's unclear how many members they have, the KFA claims to have more than 10,000 members in 120 countries. Cao de Benós has been touring Europe, giving a series of speeches recently in an effort to provide an alternate vision of North Korea that is more supportive of its government.

And that's what sympathizers are coming to hear, says Dr. Grzelczyk. "It is about some sort of anticapitalist movement, a search for an alternate vision of the world that could be exemplified in a present form by North Korea’s existence.”

Pyongyang has long used its links with sympathetic political organizations, as well as a worldwide network of “study groups” on the  juche (nationalistic) and songun (military first) ideologies, to promote and legitimize the regime, says Grzelczyk.

“We’re in a propaganda battle with the West, so we supply our own content,” Cao de Benós proclaimed last weekend to a full auditorium, including a group of teenagers and 20-somethings affiliated with the Spanish collective of Communist youth, the organization that sponsored the talk alongside the KFA.

Every aggressive action on behalf of North Korea, Cao de Benós argues, has been direct retaliation for an American action or policy. A nuclear weapons program, he says, was first developed in North Korea in response to a contemplated invasion by the Clinton administration, and not the other way around as Western history books have it.

“North Korea always acts like a mirror of American policy,” he said, pointing out that the recent nullification by North of the 60-year-old Korean War armistice occurred in response to UN sanctions. “Aggression will be met with aggression and peace will be met with peace.”

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