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Felix Abt

Goodreads Author

Born

in Switzerland

January 15

Website

http://www.a-capitalist-in-north-korea.com/

Twitter

felixabt

Genre

Nonfiction, Business, Memoir

Member Since

January 2013

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Felix Abt is a serial entrepreneur. He worked as a senior executive at multinational corporations such as the Swiss-Swedish ABB Group, a global leader in automation and power technologies; the F. Hoffmann-La Roche Group, a global leader in healthcare and the Zuellig Group Inc., a leading Asian distribution and trading group. He also worked with smaller and medium-sized enterprises, in both mature and new markets.
Thus far, he has lived and worked in nine countries, including Vietnam and North Korea, on three different continents.
His basis for going abroad was to learn and observe, not to pass judgment and not to propagate his personal views or to lecture – or even “liberate” – other people.
He is glad that he could gain experience in capacity Felix Abt is a serial entrepreneur. He worked as a senior executive at multinational corporations such as the Swiss-Swedish ABB Group, a global leader in automation and power technologies; the F. Hoffmann-La Roche Group, a global leader in healthcare and the Zuellig Group Inc., a leading Asian distribution and trading group. He also worked with smaller and medium-sized enterprises, in both mature and new markets.
Thus far, he has lived and worked in nine countries, including Vietnam and North Korea, on three different continents.
His basis for going abroad was to learn and observe, not to pass judgment and not to propagate his personal views or to lecture – or even “liberate” – other people.
He is glad that he could gain experience in capacity building, by organizing and carrying out a diverse range of training courses, from Spain to Egypt to Ivory Coast to North Korea and Vietnam. He was pleased to see a number of his former employees in these countries become successful entrepreneurs in their own rights.
He also became a lobbyist (against all odds) as president of the first foreign chamber of commerce in North Korea, advocating for reforms and a level-playing field for all businesses and against strangulating sanctions by foreign powers.
His biggest disappointment in North Korea was that his pet project, electrifying North Korean provinces far from the capital to lift millions of North Koreans from poverty, was thwarted by the actions of foreign powers.
His biggest satisfaction was to have contributed to the prevention of accidents and to save miners' lives by helping to modernize North Korean mines and to save countless more lives of North Korean patients thanks to locally made quality medicine at affordable prices, before foreign-imposed sanctions sabotaged these endeavors.
Felix Abt was a shareholder of several legitimate Joint Venture companies in North Korea (medicine, food, garments and software) which have been driven into bankruptcy by U.N. "sanctions" from the mid-2010.
Abt considers himself a politically neutral businessman and, therefore, does not share partisan views about North Korea but wants to contribute to a more objective view of the country.
To try and balance a one-sided narrative he has written not only ‘A Capitalist in North Korea’, but also a second book ‘A Land of Prison Camps, Starving Slaves and Nuclear Bombs?’
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Felix Abt’s books

Average rating: 3.65 · 282 ratings · 57 reviews · 3 distinct works • Similar authors

	A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom 3.62 avg rating — 244 ratings — published 2012 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	NORTH KOREA BEHIND THE VEIL. Inside stories and private, uncensored images. 3.77 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 2017	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Land of Prison Camps, Starving Slaves and Nuclear Bombs? An alternative account to the Western media’s blinkered North Korea portrayal. really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 8 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Felix Abt's Blog

“Felix Abt, a Swiss entrepreneur who served as a...

“Felix Abt, a Swiss entrepreneur who served as a pointperson for investments in North Korea for seven years, and headed Pyongsu, North Korea’s first foreign-invested pharmaceutical company, wrote a memoir that described repeatedly witnessing the effects of draconian US and UN sanctions on North Korea. They prevented the country, Abt wrote, from doing necessary things like rebuilding water supply a

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Felix Abt wrote a new blog post THE NEVER-ENDING KOREA WAR The North Koreans have wanted to... THE NEVER-ENDING KOREA WAR The North Koreans have wanted to normalize its relations with the United States for a long time and have believed it was po Read more of this blog post »
Sep 06, 2024 02:52AM · like

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Quotes by Felix Abt (?)

“Just finished [Capitalist in North Korea]—fascinating! What an experience. Wow." —Justin Rohrlich, Emmy Award Winner, Head Writer, Minyanville's World In Review”
― Felix Abt

tags: adventure, business, changing, exploration, inside, north-korea

1 likes

“It’s a little-known story that bicycles played a big role in propping up North Korea’s informal and privatized economy, because they helped small traders shuffle goods between the manufacturers and markets. These bicycle riders, in turn, became an informal merchant class.”
― Felix Abt, A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom

tags: north-korea

0 likes

“The husband beats his wife,” she responded. “The neighbors don’t care, and even if they complained, the man would not change.”
― Felix Abt, A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom

tags: north-korea

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See all Felix Abt's quotes »

Felix’s Quotes

“Just finished [Capitalist in North Korea]—fascinating! What an experience. Wow.”
― Justin Rohrlich Emmy Award Winner Head Writer Minyanville's World In Review

tags: a-capitalist-in-north-korea, book, fascinating, north-korea

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“Abt Draws from a trove of personal experience to create a vivid account of the people and place. Along the way, Abt addresses big questions such as economic reform and practical ones such as how to use e–commerce to achieve brand recognition in North Korea.”
― Jeff Baron U.S. Korea Institute at the John Hopkins School for International Studies

tags: book, jeff-baron, john-hopkins, north-korea, review, u-s-korea-institute

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“Felix Abt prefers to stay apolitical and impartial when sharing his thoughts and memories of the seven-year sojourn. From the book we can see that he loves Korea and cares about its people. In his assessments of North Korea's past and present the author approaches all issues from a human (and humanistic) perspective, trying to show life in the country without political or ideological coloring.”
― Leonid Petrov Korea expert lecturer in Korean Studies The University of Sydney

tags: book, impartial, leonid-petrov, north-korea

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