Kiwi man raided by police over North Korean PPE donation says it was ‘like a joke in bad taste’

An Auckland man who was raided by police for donating personal protective equipment (PPE) to North Korea described it as “a sick joke”.

Peter Wilson, an 80-year-old humanitarian worker, and another person, a Presbyterian minister who did not wish to be identified, were raided by police at their homes at 11 a.m. Monday.

The two men are members of the NZ-DPRK Society, a friendship group between New Zealand and North Korea.

Four officers searched Wilson’s home and seized laptops, phones and five file boxes.

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“It was so strange that I couldn’t take it seriously. However, my wife is quite restless, ”he said.

“Frankly, it has all been so strange that I cannot take it seriously. It was like a joke in bad taste. “

He was detained for about two hours while officers searched his home.

Wilson said police cited a breach of the 2017 United Nations sanctions against North Korea as the reason for the search.

The sanctions prohibit a wide range of business relationships with North Korean entities, but include exceptions for humanitarian work.

The society raised $ 2,000 in March to send 87 sets of PPE, bright orange medical scrubs and masks, to the Red Cross in North Korea.

The $ 2,000 donation came from the Donald Borrie Memorial Scholarship Fund, named after the group’s founder.

The fund raises money through its own email newsletter, as well as occasionally through the Presbyterian Church. Donations have been requested in the parish newsletters of St Andrews on the Terrace in Wellington and Knox Church in Christchurch.

Wilson said the donation came after a request from some of his “personal friends” at the Korea-New Zealand Friendship Society, the rough equivalent of his group for North Koreans, albeit with closer government connections.

“Nothing is completely civil society up there. They essentially function as an NGO (non-governmental organization) but they are government employees, ”Wilson said in June.

The North Korean group initially asked for money to buy Covid-19 test kits in February, but later changed its request to PPE kits for quarantine workers.

North Korea officially claims that it has never had a single case of Covid-19 within its borders, but international experts have long had doubts that the country is truly virus-free.

The NZ-DPRK Society previously had a bank account in North Korea, but discovered that its account had been blocked. Instead, the group transferred the money to a person in Indonesia who took the cash to the North Korean embassy in Jakarta.

The transfer took place on March 5, and the equipment was delivered to North Korea in June. The society sent press releases to several major outlets promoting the donation.

Several weeks later, Wilson was contacted by a representative from ASB bank, who said his account was under a routine audit.

“It was clearly more than that,” he said.

Wilson declined to answer several of the bank’s questions, citing an invasion of privacy.

He asked the bank why it was under investigation and was told that New Zealand police had alerted the bank to the transfer.

“That was a bit surprising,” he said, laughing.

Wilson said he was not worried about being arrested.

“I can’t imagine why I would be, because I can’t see what we’ve done,” he said.

When asked in June, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was not aware of the donation, has no relationship with society and does not coordinate with them on initiatives.

“We advise anyone considering doing business or engaging with North Koreans or North Korean entities to obtain independent legal advice to avoid violating New Zealand’s sanctions regulations,” a spokesperson said.

After the raid, MFAT directed all investigations to the police.

Police have been contacted for comment.

What is the NZ-DPRK Society?

The NZ-DPRK Society is a small group with a history of almost 50 years. The group has close ties to the Presbyterian Church, with various ministers involved in fundraising and humanitarian missions.

Their goal is apparently to get New Zealand to open diplomatic and trade relations with North Korea.

Wilson has visited the country eight times on various trips and helped with agricultural education.

The group officially exists to provide aid to the North Korean people, but does not approve of the North Korean government.

The group is strongly anti-US stance, believing that unnecessarily harsh US-led sanctions have driven the North Korean population into poverty.

The society has a long history of humanitarian donations, including flood relief, food supplies, and support for small businesses.

On two occasions, those donations involved government money, a request from the Official Information Law revealed.

There was a donation of approximately $ 1,500 in 2013 to purchase fertilizer for New Zealand Friendship Farm and $ 16,500 in 2015 to purchase six 10-horsepower two-wheel tractor-trailer units.

The farm is a cooperative farm in Sambong province, which grows a mixture of cattle, rice, corn, and soybeans. About a thousand people live and work on the farm, which also has schools on site.

About a third of the food grown is kept among farmers and the rest is sold to government markets.

The money came from a $ 30,000-a-year fund for a humanitarian assistance program distributed by the New Zealand embassy in Seoul.

The fund officially ended in 2016, and since then there has been no official diplomatic or humanitarian contact between the governments of New Zealand and North Korea.

That leaves the NZ-DPRK Society as one of the only New Zealand representatives within North Korea.