On February 24, Latvia expelled Russian historian and Korea expert Andrei Lankov, one of the best-known specialists on North Korea. He had been due to give a lecture in Riga, but about half an hour before the event began he was detained by municipal police and migration officials.
According to Lankov, he was told that he had been added to a list approved by the foreign minister of people barred from entering Latvia. It later emerged that the entry ban had been imposed on February 20, four days before his arrival. Even so, he had entered the country without difficulty. After the lecture was canceled, he was taken to the immigration office, fingerprinted, asked to sign documents, and then driven to the Estonian border.
On February 25, Latvia’s Foreign Ministry, replying to a query from Novaya Gazeta Europe, confirmed that Lankov had been declared persona non grata. The ministry said the decision was based on information from Latvian security services and on Part 2 of Article 61 of the immigration law, which is applied to people who may pose a threat or support actions that violate international law. It did not disclose the specific grounds.
“My superiors do not like the fact that I do not turn a real situation into a politically useful caricature,” Lankov later said, adding that he did not plan to take any action over the incident.
Andrei Pivovarov, a member of the Anti-War Committee of Russia, described the case as a demonstrative precedent, noting that the scholar had first been allowed into the country and then publicly detained before his talk. The lecture’s organizer, Curiosophy, said Lankov had broken no laws and had come to Latvia only to deliver a popular science lecture. The agency said it would use lawful means of defense, including appeals to human rights organizations and European institutions.
Andrei Lankov is a doctor of historical sciences and a professor at Seoul’s Kookmin University, where he has worked since 2004. Born in Saint Petersburg in 1963, he studied in Pyongyang on an exchange program and later worked in South Korea and Australia. He holds both Russian and Australian citizenship and says he travels on his Australian passport. After the expulsion, he went on to Estonia, where he had another lecture scheduled.