How 1,000 Volvos Ended Up In North Korea — And Made A Diplomatic Difference
In the 1970s, Sweden shipped Volvos to North Korea as part of an ill-fated trade deal. North Korea never paid for the cars. But Sweden remains an important Western diplomatic presence in Pyongyang.
Twenty-eight years ago, U.S. journalist Urban Lehner was riding in the back seat of a speeding Volvo 144 sedan. He was on assignment for The Wall Street Journal in North Korea. The road out of Pyongyang was empty.
"The 1973 Volvo screeches around tight curves, slaloming across all five lanes of the road," he wrote in an article dated Aug. 29, 1989. "In another country it would be a suicide ride, but in North Korea so few cars ply the highways that each can often have the road to itself."
Looking back now at his two-week trip, Lehner remembers going everywhere in that Volvo. He says visiting journalists usually rode in
