It sucks to get ripped off like this, but I really can’t feel sorry for someone who was dumb enough to do business in North Korea in the first place:

“I blew $500,000 on Rajin-Sonbong 15 years ago,” recalls Roh Jeong-ho, who headed the first South Korean business to set up operations in North Korea’s Rajin-Sonbong Economic Special Zone in 1995.

Roh (46) is scathing about North Korea’s latest attempts to woo investment to the impoverished Stalinist nation. “It’ll be a repeat of the 1990s, which ended in a belly-flop,” he said. “Nothing has changed in North Korea.”

Roh was once touted by the South Korean media as one of the young leaders in his early 30s who were expected to lead the post-unification era when he exported 44 km of barbed-wire fences to Rajin-Sonbong in 1995. North Korea had asked Roh to supply the fences to isolate the area from ordinary North Koreans. In return, the North offered him the use of 33,000 sq. m of land in the free zone for 50 years.

But there was a catch. The problem was a clause in the contract stipulating that the groundwork on facilities to be built within the leased land must be completed within two years. North Korea continued to make unreasonable demands regarding construction when the area was devoid of crucial infrastructure like roads, running water and electricity, and construction had to be delayed.  [North Korea]

Read the rest at the link on how North Korea ripped him off.