Prominent Russian scholar of North Korea says he was expelled from Latvia

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Andrei Lankov, a prominent Russian scholar on North Korea who teaches at a Seoul university, said he was expelled from Latvia after being detained during a lecture in the country’s capital.

In a text message Wednesday, Lankov said Latvian police did not provide a reason for his detention late Tuesday in Riga, where he was delivering a lecture on North Korea. He was later turned over to immigration authorities and taken to the border with Estonia, according to the professor and his school.

“They basically expelled me from the country, and it was all,” Lankov said, without elaborating further.

Officials at South Korea’s Kookmin University, where Lankov is a professor of history, said they confirmed he had been released and was headed to Estonia.

The Russian business news outlet RBK reported earlier that Latvian authorities had placed Lankov on a blacklist. Lankov told the outlet he was still being held around 11 p.m. Moscow time, adding that lawyers were working on his case and friends were helping with logistics.

A native of Leningrad, now called St. Petersburg, Lankov lived for years in North Korea as an exchange student in the 1980s and has studied the country throughout his career. In the 1990s, he worked in South Korea and Australia, and since 2004 has taught in Seoul. He holds dual Russian and Australian citizenship.

Lankov has been known for his cool, realist view of North Korea, which he often describes as a Machiavellian regime squeezing limited resources and manipulating major powers to ensure its survival. He has also expressed critical views of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Moscow’s use of North Korean troops to sustain its campaign.

In April 2025, a court in Moscow reportedly fined him 10,000 rubles ($130) for taking part in the activities of an organization that had been recognized as “undesirable” in Russia. Lankov told RBK at the time that he learned about the case from journalists.

__ AP writer Lynn Berry contributed from Washington.