Report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Romanian Embassy, December 8th 1954, 4262/1954

Comrade Ambassador,

We confirm the receipt of your report no. 2507 dated August 19th 1954, regarding diplomatic relations in June this year.

We can infer from the report that relations with Korean institutions and partner embassies during this period have been livelier, which denotes the embassy’s preoccupation in this regard.

We note that, most of the times, the comrades performed well in their discussions and behaved properly. In this regard, we consider that Comrade Stere acted appropriately during his visit to the Polish chargé d’affaires by refraining himself to be dragged into pointless conversations.

In our opinion, however, there have been cases of impropriety in dealing with the Korean comrades. For example:

In regards to your pressures to evacuate Korean inhabitants from the plot of land assigned for the construction of the new Embassy building, we consider it unnecessary for the embassy to intervene and request the evacuation of Korean citizens by the Korean authorities. When the necessary preparations for the construction of the Embassy building are finalized, you will be able to inform the Koreans that we wish to begin the construction works and that we require the respective land.

Regarding the visit of the Chinese chargé d’affaires to our hospital in Nampho, we believe this to be a good initiative, but not sufficiently well planned. You must know precisely whether there are other activities during the proposed date of the visit. This way you would have avoided an overlap with the ceremony you mentioned.

Regarding the visit of the ‘Barbu Lautaru’ orchestra, we note that the embassy has been put in an unpleasant situation due to the initial mismanagement of the matter, in that the embassy went beyond the instructions received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, making concrete proposals when the matter of sending the orchestra was not yet in question. On the basis of such proposals, the Korean comrades were compelled to prepare for a Romanian ensemble of 100 people, and Comrade Stere (probably after receiving our letter criticizing the manner in which the embassy had proceeded), during a meeting with the Deputy Minister of Culture, on June 20th, had to amend what Comrade Neamu had informed the Korean Foreign Ministry on June 2nd. Undoubtedly, this places the embassy in an unfavorable position and, as such, we request that you keep this in mind for the future.

The report implies that the Deputy Minister of Culture and Propaganda expressed his wish to receive more music from our composers. We inform you we have taken the necessary measures and will send a number of musical compositions to be delivered to the Ministry of Culture in the DPRK.

Furthermore, in regards to partner countries’ gradual replacement of their medical teams in the DPRK, we inform you that we have notified the Romanian Red Cross of the issue.

The report shows that, during the visit to the Minister of Foreign Trade, the comrade discussed about cooperatives. Given that we are interested in the matter, we request that you send us a detailed material on cooperatives in the DPRK (how many types, forms of appearance, character, scope etc.)

Also in regards to this visit, we believe that, when it was pointed that Comrade Birladeanu is no longer Minister of Foreign Trade, it would have been appropriate to note Comrade Birladeanu’s new position, which had been published in the press.

We request an activity report of the Military Armistice Commission and the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission in implementing the truce terms in Korea, since the signing of the Armistice.

Signed: Director, M. Magheru