Latvia expels russian expert on North and South Korea Andrei Lankov

Latvia has deported russian expert on North Korea Andrei Lankov, whom it had previously declared persona non grata.

According to the BBC russian service, on Tuesday, police in Riga detained the 62-year-old professor and took him to the immigration service. On the same day, it became known that on February 20, the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had declared him an undesirable person.

Lankov had planned to give a lecture in Riga on "North Korea: What the Tops Want and Fear." However, municipal police officers arrived at the event, after which the scientist was taken to the migration service. The Latvian side did not explain the reasons for the decision.

The coordinator of consuls of the Anti-War Committee, Andrey Pivovarov (recognized in russia as a "foreign agent"), reported, citing a lawyer, that the professor had been issued deportation papers and escorted to the border with Estonia, where he was scheduled to give his next lecture.

Later, Lankov himself wrote on his Telegram channel that he had safely reached Estonia. "The documents shown to me and my lawyers did not contain any explanation as to why I was permanently expelled from Latvia (where I spent 4 hours after a thirty-year break)," he noted. At the same time, the professor added that he did not intend to appeal the decision of the Latvian authorities, since he considers it absurd. "However, in general, everything is quite clear. The bosses do not like the fact that I do not make a politically useful caricature of the real situation," Lankov wrote.

The Curiosophy Events agency, which organized the lecture, announced its intention to appeal to human rights organizations and European institutions to "defend the rights of the scientist and the audience and prevent something like this from happening in the future."

Andrey Lankov is a professor at Seoul's Kookmin University and one of the most famous russian-speaking experts on the culture and politics of the Korean Peninsula. He holds russian and Australian citizenship.