Statue export ban hits at Pyongyang's soft power and hard cash

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North Koreans bow in front of bronze statues of the late leaders Kim Il-sung, left, and Kim Jong-il at Munsu Hill in Pyongyang. File photo: AP

Published: 11:34am, 27 Dec 2016Updated: 10:11pm, 27 Dec 2016

With somewhere around 4,000 artists and staff, the Mansudae Art Studio, a huge complex of nondescript concrete buildings on a sprawling, walled-off campus with armed guards in the heart of Pyongyang, churns out everything from watercolour tigers to mosaics so large they seem to depict a race from another, taller planet.

But its statues — the really big, bronze, monumental ones on foreign shores — are what appear to have caught the attention of the UN Security Council.

In one of the odder items on the list of things North Korea can’t export under United Nations’ sanctions, statues were explicitly listed for the first time last month when the Security Council approved a raft of punishments in response to Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test, which it conducted in September.

North Korean soldiers carry packs marked with the nuclear symbol during a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the Korean War armistice in Pyongyang. File photo: AP

To those familiar with the North’s exports, the move to ban statue sales wasn’t entirely a surprise. It’s one of the few things other than coal and natural resources, exports of which were also heavily restricted under the new sanctions, that North Korea can still find a market for abroad.

Moreover, sanctions advocates and proponents of isolating Pyongyang for its nuclear program believe Mansudae, and particularly its export arm, Mansudae Overseas Projects, is being used to quietly maintain, expand or obfuscate the nature of its relations with other countries.