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Ethiopia North Korea
Given the change in Soviet policy toward Ethiopia, Addis
Ababa's relations with North Korea took on added importance
as the 1990s began. There was little information on the
nature and scope of North Korean military assistance to
Ethiopia, but most Western military observers agreed that it
would be impossible for North Korea to duplicate the
quantity and quality of weapons that the Soviet Union had
been providing to the Mengistu regime. Nonetheless,
beginning in 1985 P'yngyang deployed hundreds of military
advisers to Ethiopia and provided an array of small arms,
ammunition, and other matériel to the Mengistu regime.
In November 1985, North Korea provided Ethiopia a 6 million
birr (for value of the
birr
--see Glossary) interest-free
loan to be used to purchase equipment with which to
construct a shipyard on Haleb Island, off Aseb. Planners
expected the shipyard to produce wooden-hulled and steelhulled craft ranging in size from 5,000 to 150,000 tons
displacement. (As of 1991, the shipyard had not been
completed.) North Korea also had paid for the training of a
20,000-man special operations force at the Tatek military
camp.
Data as of 1991
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