Goodwill Without a Budget: Bern’s Return to Pyongyang

When Bern fancies itself a global mediator, its faith in pure dialogue rarely wavers. Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis is travelling to Pyongyang to reopen Switzerland’s representation, which had been shuttered in 2020 amid the pandemic. Yet this return marks a fundamental shift in strategy. What spent decades operating as a humanitarian outpost under the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation is now reborn as a strictly political diplomatic office, subordinate to the embassy in Beijing.

The decision invites an obvious query: what leverage does a small, neutral nation carry into a totalitarian regime when it leaves its chequebook at home? Formal relations between Bern and Pyongyang stretch back to 1974, but they truly took root during the severe famines of the 1990s. At the time, Swiss aid arrived without a visible political agenda, building a rare reservoir of access and regime trust.

Thomas Fisler, who directed the Swiss cooperation office in Pyongyang between 2013 and 2017, recently noted that humanitarian engagement opened crucial political doors. In those years, aid projects allowed Swiss delegates to travel outside the capital, observe rural realities firsthand, and maintain a functional channel with local authorities.

Without that developmental budget, the dynamics shift entirely. Pyongyang does not offer access out of polite appreciation for Swiss good intentions. The regime calculates strictly in terms of tangible benefit. Devoid of local aid projects, Swiss diplomats will likely find their freedom of movement severely curtailed, isolated within the diplomatic enclave.

Rebuilding trust under these conditions will be an exercise in patience and tightrope walking. North Korean authorities scrupulously monitor how foreign outposts and their diplomats are portrayed in Swiss media, ready to restrict operational freedom at the slightest hint of unhelpful commentary. Bern may congratulate itself on placing a flag back in North Korea, but without practical incentives on the table, its high-minded pursuit of dialogue risks becoming an exercise in quiet self-satisfaction.

Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com