The decision taken by President Enrique Peña Nieto to expel the North Korean ambassador from Mexico has been applauded by the U.S. Department of State.
Last week, Kim Hyong Gil was declared a persona non gratis and given 72 hours to leave the country.
Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray said Mexico was sending “a very clear message” and abiding by the tough new sanctions on North Korea approved recently by the U.N. Security Council.
Videgaray, however, said the expulsion of the envoy did not necessarily mean diplomatic relations with North Korea have been suspended.
Susan Thorton, the assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the U.S. State Department, congratulated Mexico on the decision, noting that this country “traditionally does not align itself with the United States in these matters.”
Reaction to the Mexican government’s move was varied, with some prominent left-wing politicians expressing their disapproval.
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former presidential candidate and leader of the Morena party, called the move “unwise” and suggested Mexico should remain “at the margins” of the dispute between North Korea and the United States.
Senator Dolores Padierna said Peña Nieto had disregarded Mexico’s traditional foreign policy principles in order to “obey the instructions of the White House.”
While some observers interpreted the president’s decision as a maneuver to ingratiate his government with the United States amid the delicate renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), others believed Peña Nieto was more concerned about strengthening the relationship with Japan, Mexico’s third largest trading partner, and one of the Asian nations most at threat from North Korea’s nuclear escalation and muscle flexing in recent months.
In a statement, the North Korean government said: “If we are talking about violations of international law, first we must talk about the United States, that for half a century has tried by various means to crush a sovereign nation and, year after year, openly carries out war games of great magnitude.” The statement called Mexico’s decision to expel its ambassador “an ignorant measure.”
The U.N. sanctions will not affect either nation significantly. According to MIT’s Observatory of Economic Complexity, in 2015 Mexico exported oil to the tune of $US45 million to North Korea, while this country reciprocated by purchasing $US13.8 million of products. That’s a drop in the ocean compared with the $US21 billion in trade this country carried out with Japan in 2016.
Peru has also expelled its North Korean ambassador from the country, although most Latin American nations have not followed Mexico’s lead.