An Egyptian telecommunications company has become the first mobile-phone company to invest in North Korea. The 25-year license agreement includes a $400 million dollar investment and a 75/25 partnership with a state-owned Korean company. Read about it here and here. Naguib Sawiris, owner of Orascom Telecom Holding, is in North Korea to ink the deal. His brother, Samih Sawirs, owner of Orascom Construction Holding, invested $115 million in North Korea last year.
Egypt has enjoyed amicable, thought not close, relations with North Korea, even exchanging missile technology in the 70s and 80s and maybe as recently as the late 90s. There is no recent evidence of such military cooperation. Economic cooperation, on the other hand, is a welcome development. First, new technology, even if only state officials and elites will gain access in the beginning, eventually leads towards greater access to information and greater opportunities for political dialogue (it's happening in Egypt right now). Second, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Egyptian diplomats and businessmen could serve as an avenue of quiet diplomacy between the United States and North Korea, especially if Egypt is seen as disinterested politically, which, for the most part, it is.
