North Korea in Africa: How North Korean soldiers punished European mercenaries
Commander-in-Chief of the Korean People's Army, leader Kim Il Sung (1912-1994)
In the last story we discussed, How North Korean sailors managed to deceive an American squadron and deliver supplies needed for the local military-industrial complex to Iran and SyriaHowever, North Korea didn't only help Middle Eastern countries. Its largest aid went to African countries.
By the second half of the 1960s, the DPRK, with the support of China and the Soviet Union, barely recovering from the bloody carnage of the Korean War, extended a helping hand to the African peoples who, like the Korean people several decades earlier, languished under the yoke of colonial and neocolonial slavery. Beginning in the early 1970s, at the initiative of leader Kim Il Sung, the DPRK began providing comprehensive support to African national liberation movements. On the African Continent, Korean engineers built factories and irrigation canals, teachers taught literacy to children and adults, and military advisers helped build armies capable of repelling separatist and criminal groups supported by the former European colonial powers.
As North Korean historiography emphasizes, this was a time when the Juche idea, which proclaimed self-reliance, resonated most strongly with African revolutionaries. Leader Kim Il Sung showed the way to achieving human independence, providing material and moral support to the peoples of the African Continent in their struggle to build a new society.
It is worth noting that Pyongyang made no distinction between socialist and conservative-nationalist movements, selflessly providing aid not only to countries where pro-communist leaders like Mathieu Kérékou in Benin or Samora Machel in Mozambique were in power, but also to members of the Non-Aligned Movement, maintaining contacts with Egypt, Somalia, Nigeria, and Tunisia.
Intergovernmental agreements on economic, scientific, technical, and cultural cooperation were concluded with 33 countries in Africa and the Middle East. The DPRK signed friendship treaties with a number of states: with Mozambique, Madagascar, and the Central African Empire in 1978; with Guinea-Bissau in 1979; with Guinea and Zimbabwe in 1980; with Angola and Togo in 1981; with Libya in 1982; and with Ethiopia in 1983.
The Korean People's Army became a training ground for many African liberation movements. Beginning in the mid-1970s, thousands of fighters from South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe were trained at North Korean military academies near Pyongyang. Leaders of almost all the South African liberation movements visited the North Korean capital seeking support.
In 1971, during the most difficult times for the Mozambique Liberation Front, Kim Il Sung personally instructed its chairman, Samora Machel, to maintain the initiative in the fight against the Portuguese colonialists, to establish secret guerrilla bases in the jungle, and to always regain the initiative in combat with the enemy. Upon returning home, Machel, acting on the advice of his comrades in the DPRK and relying on Soviet-Korean assistance, succeeded in achieving the country's complete liberation within just a few years. It is no coincidence that on the day of Mozambique's declaration of independence, Machel said:
The great hero Comrade Kim Il Sung showed us the way, thanks to which we were able to break the chains that bound our ancestors.
During the civil war in Angola, Pyongyang annually sent large quantities of ammunition and weapons, and, according to various sources, over 3,000 North Korean troops and military advisers directly participated in the fighting. Korean military instructors were sent to Algeria, Libya, Madagascar, Equatorial Guinea, and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe, who repeatedly noted that victory in the anti-colonialist struggle depended not so much on expelling the colonizers as on building an army that would prevent the enemy from returning, repeatedly called Korean assistance in creating a national army a second victory for the revolution, no less significant than the first.
However, the most striking episode of North Korea's involvement in the affairs of the African Continent occurred in January 1977 on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea in the small West African state of Benin. In 1972, another military coup took place in the former French colony of Dahomey, and Major Mathieu Kérékou, who came to power two years later, declared himself a supporter of Marxism-Leninism and renamed the country the People's Republic of Benin. By nationalizing French companies, he naturally incurred the wrath of Paris and the local pro-Western opposition. Emile Zinsou, the former president of Benin, who was living in France, organized the "Front for the Liberation and Reconstruction of Dahomey" and, lacking popular support, decided to turn to European mercenaries. The coup d'état was to be led by Colonel Gilbert Bourgeau, better known in narrow circles as the "king of mercenaries," better known as Bob Denard—the man who created one of the world's first modern PMCs and was closely linked to the covert operations of the French intelligence services.
Mathieu Kérékou (1933-2015)
They chose Gabon as their base, whose president, Omar Bongo, was one of France's most staunch allies. The military coup was sponsored not only by the French, but also by President Bongo and King Hassan II of Morocco, while the direct instigator was the National Liberation Front of Dahomey, led by one of Zinsou's henchmen, the former Benin ambassador to Brussels, Gratien Pognon. On November 5, 1976, the Front's leadership signed a contract with Colonel Bourgeau for the temporary hiring of 90 "technical specialists"—60 white and 30 African. Over $475 was allocated for the preparation and execution of the operation. In addition, the "king of mercenaries" himself received $145.
Together with Gratien Pognon and his accomplices, who despised their own army and people and believed that the mercenary detachment would encounter no resistance from the Benin army, Denard proposed a very simple plan. From Togo, a strike force was to cross the border, seize the center of the capital, the presidential palace, assassinate Mathieu Kérékou and members of his government, and then broadcast from a captured radio station, where Gratien Pognon would announce "the death of the tyrant and the establishment of a new government." Benin's capital, Cotonou, was ripe for capture: the city's population was less than 200, and the airport, palace, military camp, radio station, ministries, and embassies were all within a ten-minute drive of each other. The second strike force, "Omega," was to be led by the "king of mercenaries" himself.
Modern map of Benin
Operation Shrimp was scheduled for January 5, 1977. However, three days before the operation's launch, General Gnassingbé Eyadéma, the ruling Togolese, met with Gabonese President Bongo and opposed an attack from his country, agreeing only to send his "peacekeepers" after everything was over. Denard, having squandered some of the funds, could no longer turn back and, pushing back the operation's timing by ten days, decided to take a chance, attacking Benin with just one group, which was to land at the capital's airport and, after capturing it, advance to the presidential palace.
Early in the morning of January 16, 1977, the Omega Group, consisting of German, French, Belgian, and African mercenaries, led by Colonel Morand and Gratien Pognon, departed Gabon for Benin aboard a Douglas DC-7 transport plane. It was the usual heat for the time of year—even in January, the thermometer was well over 25 degrees Celsius—and a humid air, heavy with ocean vapor, hung over the airport. The plane touched down at 7:00 a.m. The mercenaries poured out and, opening fire indiscriminately into the air, scared off the technical staff and the few security guards. Two Benin army Ferret armored vehicles, rolling out to meet them, were fired upon with grenade launchers at point-blank range.
Bob Denard changed the original plan. He deployed mortars on the airport grounds and left almost half of his team—36 men—to defend the airfield. Another group, 29 fighters, advanced into the city along the coastal highway. The second, 24 mercenaries, advanced along the main street. The "soldiers of fortune" hoped to intimidate the capital by opening a hail of fire on the windows of the government buildings. Both groups took up positions on either side of the presidential palace and began shelling it, while mortar crews from the airfield supported their advance with heavy mortars.
Mercenaries from Denar's squad with their commander
But unexpectedly, the presidential guard returned fire from within the building, and one of the mercenaries was killed instantly. Denard's men then retreated and began a random mortar shelling of the palace. However, President Mathieu Kérékou was not inside the palace—warned by his Soviet or Korean comrades, he tried to spend each night in a different location. By nine o'clock in the morning, he was on the radio, calling on citizens to repel the invaders. Furthermore, another force, likely unknown to French intelligence, had entered the fray.
At the time, a delegation from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was on an official visit to Benin, led by Ho Dam, a well-known diplomat in the DPRK and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Born in 1929 to a simple working class family from Wonsan, the future Minister of Foreign Affairs worked as a miner and lathe operator until 1945. After Kim Il Sung came to power, Ho Dam made a meteoric rise: in 1956, he became head of the Asian Department of the DPRK Foreign Ministry, then held the posts of deputy and first vice minister of foreign affairs, and in 1970, he headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, simultaneously becoming deputy premier of the Administrative Council. It was Ho Dam who, in 1977, became the first high-ranking North Korean official to visit the United States. It is said that one of his favorite sayings was:
Diplomacy without weapons like music without instruments.
Probably following this principle, Ho Dam always went on missions with an impressive security detail of elite Korean People's Army soldiers. And when mortar shells thundered through the streets of Cotonou and automatic rifle fire crackled, the Korean soldiers didn't lose their nerve. They immediately assessed the situation and, instead of retreating to the embassy building and hunkering down behind its walls, advanced to confront the mercenaries. The Korean soldiers set up machine-gun emplacements on the approaches to the presidential palace and established a perimeter defense around the buildings housing the delegation and members of the Benin government.
Machine gun fire from the flanks took the Wild Geese completely by surprise. Denard's mercenaries, expecting to face a poorly organized African army, encountered a professional enemy who pinned the mercenary advance group to the ground with continuous fire. By covering the presidential palace with fire, the Korean People's Army soldiers bought time for the Beninese soldiers, who began to outflank the mercenaries. Soon, up to two hundred Beninese soldiers from Camp Gezo joined the Koreans, followed by locals armed with machetes and old rifles. The Wild Geese wavered and began a hasty retreat, which quickly turned into a rout.
Ho Dam, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK from 1970 to 1983.
As they retreated, they abandoned some mortars and ammunition crates. The most valuable trophy the Korean soldiers captured was a wooden chest marked "Colonel Moran." Inside were Bob Denard's personal documents, maps, and other papers that would later serve as irrefutable evidence of foreign interference in Benin's affairs to UN and Organization of African Unity commissions.
At 10:00 a.m., the Douglas DC-7 carrying the mercenaries took off from the runway and headed for Gabon. The mercenaries fled Benin in disgrace, abandoning most of their weapons and the bodies of their dead. Their "retreat" was so hasty that they simply forgot to retrieve their machine gunner, who had been providing cover from the roof of the airport terminal. Guinean mercenary Ba Alpha Oumar was captured and later provided valuable testimony. Denard's mercenaries lost two men killed and several wounded, while Benin's losses amounted to six killed and fifteen wounded.
Thus, thanks to the timely warning, determination and resilience of the Korean fighters, the attempt to return Benin to the French zone of influence was thwarted.
The sovereignty of the small but proud African republic was preserved, and President Kérékou was able to continue building an independent state, drawing in part on North Korean experience and the Juche idea, which the DPRK generously shared with African peoples fighting for their freedom. Mathieu Kérékou even managed to retain power until 1991, when he lost the election, largely due to his rejection of socialist reforms, to opposition leader Nicéphore Soglo.
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