Berlin (AFP)

"Our hotel welcomes you to the beating heart of Berlin": The "City Hostel" and its affordable rooms are popular. But it is at the heart of a dispute because of its location: within the North Korean embassy.

The hotel manager attacked the administrative district of Mitte, the prestigious district in the center of Berlin, before the administrative court on Tuesday for trying to dislodge it in the name of respecting sanctions against the regime of Kim Jong-un .

Located a stone's throw from the Brandenburg Gate and CheckPoint Charlie attractions, the establishment and its hundred or so rooms receive rather positive comments despite criticisms of cleanliness.

For 17 euros a night, for the lowest prices, it's hard to find better in the heart of the German capital.

The "City Hostel" has a special feature, ignored by most travelers who put their suitcase there: its premises belong to North Korea.

- 38,000 euros in rent -

The five-storey concrete building is also attached to the Embassy of the Pyongyang regime, owner since the 1960s of this area of ​​about 6,000 square meters.

In the days of Communist East Germany, the imposing bar housed families of North Korean diplomats. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the embassy began to sublet certain rooms and parking spaces.

"North Korea must not have made as much money anywhere else in the world as it did in Berlin," the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote last year.

From 2004, a manager undertook to install a hotel there, in return for the payment each month of approximately 38,000 euros in rent to the North Korean regime.

It was these regular payments that set fire to the powder and prompted the local authorities, supported by the government of Angela Merkel, to demand in 2017 that the activity be stopped.

"North Korean representations abroad must be limited to diplomatic and consular activities," the German government warned.

This is based, recalls a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to AFP, on a resolution of the UN Security Council of November 2016 imposing new sanctions because of the North Korean nuclear program. A resolution notably prohibiting Pyongyang from using embassies for purposes other than diplomatic.

"Any commercial activity is prohibited (...) the City Hostel in Berlin does not constitute a diplomatic or consular activity", maintains the German government. He asked to "close this source of funding for the North Korean regime as soon as possible".

With the UN resolution, the international community then tried to drastically limit the regime's access to foreign currencies, while Pyongyang used its diplomatic network to obtain hard currencies like the dollar or the euro via commercial activities or traffics.

The hotel managing company, EGI Gmbh, has an activity mainly based in Turkey where it is at the head of other hotel establishments.

- 'Limits' -

If she refuses to speak to the media, EGI intends to "defend itself by all means at its disposal", she warned in 2017 in a rare public statement. It thus attacked before administrative justice the district of Berlin-Mitte to seek to dislodge it from the building.

His lawyer did not respond to requests from AFP.

For Tom Schreiber, Social Democrat member of the Berlin Senate, at the forefront in this fight against the hotel, "the sanctions and regulations in matters of foreign trade must apply to the North Koreans in Berlin", explains- he at AFP.

According to him, this Berlin situation should "give an opportunity to show the regime the limits not to be crossed" and serve as a "model" for other situations where the North Korean presence would be "less visible".

© 2020 AFP