Posted on 09/07/2014 5:12:48 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
North Korea Owes Sweden €300m for 1,000 Volvos It Stole 40 Years Ago - And Is Still Using
By John Ericson / August 29, 2014 6:43 AM EDT
North Korea’s foremost trade debt to the western world is bizarre even by North Korean standards. Each time the administration misses a payment, as it has done every year for the past 40 years, we are reminded of one of the most unexpected political twists of the last century: Kim Il-sung scamming Sweden out of 1,000 Volvo 144 sedans.
It is a story that is just as strange as it sounds – and, in 2014, it shows how North Korea’s grand aspirations and increasingly bellicose rhetoric may founder on a chronic inability to assess its own financial ability. Judging by emerging tourist footage and rogue documentaries, it may also be an unexpected testament to the durability of Swedish engineering.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
P!
What’s more amazing is that NewsWeak still exists, even in just electronic form.
Volvos and Saabs are great cars. I see a lot of twenty year old specimens with a lot of mileage on them that are stilling being ridden hard daily. Cars I mean.
Any nation stupid enough to have lent them that kind of money circa 1974 deserves what they got: ZERO. Then again, I guess this shows the distinction between communists and socialists: commie’s take what they want and socialists give what they believe others need.
“It was no coincidence that journalist Lovisa Lamm Nordenskiöld and former diplomat Erik Cornell, two of the main chroniclers of the short-lived trade adventure, both settled on the word “paradise” when describing North Korea’s self-image during the late 1960s and early 1970s.”
Boggles the mind.
Hilarious article
The Norks once kept a supply train the ChiComs sent them. After the goods were unloaded they kept the train
And Chinese train crews had to go back home on foot.
300m euros!
Interest truly is the eighth wonder of the world. Of course, the key is extending credit only to the credit worthy.
The balloon payment on this deal is gonna be devastating. /s
It was this sort of transaction that did in the Soviet Union. They sold stuff and did not receive payment. Banks received Soviet guarantee notes in collateral for funds lent to the companies producing the weapons and meeting payrolls.
After the break up, the companies were free to buy stuff abroad, read from me, but had no money. They did have at the banks the chits from say Iraq. The banks holding the worthless chits offered them to the companies at a discount. They wanted to trade the chits promising Iraqi goods for new goods from America.
The chits had a fancy bureaucratic name but were in effect offers to pay in kind that had no kind.
You might have posted that one a few years ago :)
I think I did it “several years ago.” :-)
North Korea even scammed the Soviet Union. The USSR sent combat aircraft, and the Norks sent in return useless crappy knickknacks.
Jeez, I’m going to my Volvo dealer and see if I can get the same deal as the NK did.
When I was stationed in Germany, I bought a Volvo 144S from my commander. He bought it at the factory in Malmo in 1968. He had it shipped back to the States and then back to Germany when he got stationed there. I shipped it back to the States when I ETS’d. I drove it cross country to Nevada and then to Colorado when I moved there. It was a good car!
I see a lot of twenty year old models with a lot of mileage on them that are stilling being ridden hard daily.
But I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing.
Actually, you have that reversed.
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