A North Korean medical team has dodged United Nations (UN) sanctions after it was confirmed the team landed in Libya to work in a hospital.
Current UN sanctions forbid anyone from North Korea working abroad.
The 38-member team (pictured on their arrival) is to provide medical care at the Martyr Attia Al-Kaseh Teaching Hospital in Kufra City, the hospital announced on social media.
The party includes a surgeon, paediatrician, cardiologist, obstetrician, otolaryngologist, dentist and 12 nurses, according to the hospital.
While the hospital only identified the workers as ‘Korean’, a statement out of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang said the team included nationals who had previously worked in Senegal in 2019.
Radio Free Asia also reported on the team’s presence in Kufra and identified the workers as North Korean.
Their arrival comes a year-and-a-half after North Korea’s Ambassador to Libya, Ju Jin Hyok told the nation’s Minister for Health that North Korea would seek to restore medical cooperation as soon as possible after Libya’s security situation improved and pandemic restrictions were lifted.
Libyan hospitals relied heavily on North Korean medical professionals before the country fell into a lengthy civil war in 2014.
“Many village hospitals in the south do not have doctors because we rely on North Korean doctors [who have left],” one Libyan hospital wrote on its Facebook page in 2016.
UN sanctions have banned North Koreans from working abroad since December, 2019, alleging that their earnings fund the country’s nuclear and missile programs.
Tripoli, 12 January 2023
