Huawei Technologies Co. worked with Chinese state-owned firm Panda International to supply the Hermit Kingdom with antennas, stations and other materials needed to launch Koryolink – its commercial wireless network – in 2008, the Washington Post reported.

The newspaper, citing internal documents it obtained and conversations with people familiar with the matter, reported that Panda International had a contract with Huawei in which Panda would transport Huawei’s telecom equipment to Dandong – a Chinese-North Korea border town – where it would then be placed on trains and delivered by rail to Pyongyang.

That agreement, the newspaper adds, came after then-leader Kim Jong Il secretly visited Huawei’s headquarters in China in 2006.

The Washington Post reports that, for years, employees from both companies worked out of a cheap hotel near Kim Il Sung Square in the North Korean capital. Huawei, it added, also provided “managed service” of the network. And one current Huawei employee told the newspaper that he worked in 2012 and 2013 on Koryolink’s automated callback system.

Those familiar with the operations told the Washington Post both companies left Pyongyang in 2016 as efforts increased to place harsher international sanctions on North Korea due to its nuclear program and human rights abuses.

Today, the company claims it “has no business presence” in North Korea.

“Huawei is fully committed to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate, including all export control and sanction laws and regulations,” a spokesperson told the Washington Post.

Consequently, new designs of Huawei smartphones are going to lose access to some Google apps.

The move comes after the Donald Trump administration added Huawei to a long list of companies that American firms cannot trade with unless they have a licence.

Google said it was “complying with the order and reviewing the implications”, in a statement.

Existing Huawei smartphone users will now be able to update apps and push through security fixes, as well as update Google Play services.

However, when Google launches the subsequent version of Android later on in the year, it may not be available on Huawei devices.

Future Huawei devices may no longer have great apps such as YouTube and Maps.

However, Huawei can still use the version of the Android operating system available through an open source licence.

From the CCS Insight consultancy, Ben Wood said the move by Google would have “big implications for Huawei’s consumer business”.

And last Wednesday the Donald Trump administration added Huawei to its “entity list” which bans the company from acquiring technology from US firms without government approval.

Huawei chief executive Ren Zhengfei told Japanese media on Saturday, in his first comments since being placed on the list: “We have already been preparing for this.”

He said the firm, which buys about $67bn (£52.6bn) worth of components each year according to the Nikkei business newspaper, would push ahead with developing its own parts.

Huawei faces growing backlash from Western countries, led by the US, over possible risks that could pop by using its products in next-generation 5G mobile networks.

He signed an executive order that effectively restricts companies in the US from using foreign telecoms which is heavily believed to pose national security risks.

The order does not specifically name any company, but is believed to refer to Huawei.

The Chinese tech giant said in a statement that barring its business in the United States would only adversely affect Americans companies.

Few countries, led by the US, have raised concerns in the past few months that Huawei products could be used by China for surveillance

Huawei has said in a statement that its work does not pose any threats at all and says it is not dependent on the Chinese government.

Huawei released a statement on Thursday in which the company said: “Restricting Huawei from doing business in the US will not make the US more secure or stronger.

“Instead, this will only serve to limit the US to inferior yet more expensive alternatives, leaving the US lagging behind in 5G deployment, and eventually harming the interests of US companies and consumers.”

The statement also included, “unreasonable restrictions on Huawei raised other serious legal issues”. Huawei has outright denied the allegations against them.

On Tuesday, its chairman Liang Hua said it was “willing to sign no-spy agreements with governments” during a meeting in London, as concerns over the security status of its widely-used products used in next-generation 5G mobile networks continued to grow.

President Trump doesn’t specifically name or point exclusively to Huawei in his executive order but the purpose is clear: to keep China’s national champion out of the US.

Huawei has repeatedly reported that if the United States ban Huawei from its networks, they are going to be the ones to lose out and not Huawei.

And that’s absolutely true. Reason being that even without the United States market, Huawei controls at about 40 to 60% of the networks around the globe, industry analysts say.

However, Huawei may not necessarily need the US market, but it definitley needs the key components that it gets from the United States.