by Felix Abt
That’s because a right-wing parliamentarian from the countryside, with a trite worldview, came into the picture. He persuaded the majority of Swiss parliament that the country should abandon working “with a totalitarian dictatorship which does neither respect human rights nor agreements regarding nuclear weapons programs and which is destabilizing the region.”
From then on Switzerland limited its activities to humanitarian help such as supplying food. Basically, this meant that the government fell back into the fold of unoriginality that plagued the rest of the Western aid organizations, a stance that was creating a “culture of dependence” for the North Korean people.
That’s a far swing away from 1997, the year the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency opened an office in Pyongyang. It had publicly declared that its mission was to encourage reform. But the promising experiment was buried.
Can North Korea build a knowledge-based state?
It’s true that Confucius has promoted inequality in social relations, with the exception of relations among friends. According to him, subjects have to be subordinate to rulers, children subordinate to parents, younger subordinate to elder, wives subordinate to husbands, and even mothers subordinate to the eldest son in case the father died. When the revolutionaries that once challenged Confucianism grew older they and their successors started embracing Confucian authoritarianism.
But Confucius was also one of the first great men in history to demand education for all. He would have strongly disliked the fact that nowadays in Confucian countries, quality education is a privilege for an elite who can afford private school. He would also have been very critical of relentless competition and school drills, which includes learning entire books by heart without understanding and assimilating its contents. “Studying without thinking leads to confusion; thinking without studying leads to laziness,” he said.3
Confucius traveled to all sorts of city-states during his time, and was an open-minded person eager to learn from just anybody. He constitutes one of the strongest symbols for North Korea in its hopes to open up and prosper in a new world of knowledge and creativity.
1 http://pasttense7.xanga.com/337520619/item/
2 http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=asia+brief+januar+2011&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CGQQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.deza.admin.ch%2Fressources%2Fresource_en_198914.pdf&ei=M8bqT_PUGaHAiQfQx9XDBQ&usg=AFQjCNGWFOSTJEHOdOllmfcWOZHC2A5qAg
3 http://wenku.baidu.com/view/7a2a63d728ea81c758f578b4.html
Chapter 11:
Coming and Going
“An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.” — Lao Tzu
Traffic control in the revolutionary capital was a serious matter. You could tell just by peering at the omnipresent traffic police, who were young and attractive women with stern and angry faces. They directed cars with their Robocop-like movements.
One time, I wanted to cheer up one of the grimacing androids. I regularly stopped at a crossroads where one beauty queen stood, and on that day I held out a lengthy smile to her. When she saw me her face instantly became angrier. I did not give up. In a battle of wits and patience, I kept smirking at her over the next few weeks, and she kept playing her game as a lifeless bureaucratic, too.
It was time to reverse my tactics on her. Another time I pulled up in my car, and instead of beaming at her, I mirrored her livid face. This time I won, as she could not control herself and burst into laughter, then tried hard to reset herself to her earlier serious position. From then on, every time she saw my car approaching she started smiling and of course, I smiled back. Obviously she realized that being a good police woman does not exclude a friendly smile. After that, I found driving in Pyongyang to be better than ever before.
To my chagrin, the police beauties didn’t hang around for the muggy summer. When the weather became too hot, the police women took a break for a few weeks and the local authorities switched on the traffic lights. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling, like nobody was left for playing the giggly games. I would stop in front of the red lights, all alone with surrounded by no other vehicles, patiently waiting until they turned green. I missed the policewomen, regardless of whether they winced or smirked.
The police girls that are slowly being replaced by traffic signals wear pigtails attached to the back of their caps. The iconic policewomen were another privilege for Pyongyangites and visitors. In all other cities, traffic was directed exclusively by burly, middle-aged police men who did not offer a spectacle in public. This traffic police woman, like most of her peers, takes her duty very seriously.
After finishing their shift, male and female police officers randomly stopped cars to ask for a lift home. Drivers always obeyed out of respect and sympathy for the people’s traffic police men and women. I stopped a few times at night when young traffic police women waved. They usually quickly walked to the car, opened the door and were about to sit down. But they were surprised to see me, a white-skinned foreigner smiling back at them. They glanced at me, politely shut the door, and walked away. Under North Korean regulations, they weren’t supposed to be driving in a foreigner’s car.
Only under special circumstances did North Koreans not follow the state rules on driving with outsiders. One particularly frigid night, a policeman stopped me, jumped into my car, but at first did not recognize my face. We turned towards each other and were both surprised. But neither of us made a fuss. As I drove away, we communicated with hand signs. After a couple of kilometers he made an abrupt sign to stop, and then leaped out of the car and disappeared into the darkness.
I worried that a colleague or a stranger could have seen him getting into my car, giving the wrong impression that I was recruiting spies. The next morning, I informed my staff about the rendezvous. In front of all of them, I blamed myself for not kicking him out of the car and expressed sorrow over the situation. Overall, I hoped that he would not be punished for the incident.
My staff quieted down and looked serious when I talked to them. A case as serious as this had to be reported by them to the government. I repeatedly asked them in the coming days if they had heard something about this case, knowing they could tap into their contacts in the police. After some days, I was told that the policeman could continue his work but that he would certainly be more careful in future when stopping cars. It’s highly likely that he underwent some very unpleasant scrutiny and self-criticism sessions. For him, it was certainly a lesson learned.
Unplanned encounters like this gave a lot of insight into what North Koreans must deal with, and it was rare for foreigners to witness how this society truly operated. For instance, in another encounter, a hiding police car pulled me over when I, foolishly in a hurry, made a U-turn on a highway where there was no traffic.
The patroller immediately asked for my passport and my driving license. I realized what this meant: a hefty penalty of $200, in lieu of which the authorities would never have returned these documents to me. Thankfully, I had changed my suit at lunch time and left these documents in the old suit. It must have been the language barrier and the mutual embarrassment that made the police let me leave without a fine.
Another time, I sped down a street in Pyongyang. A policeman stopped me. Even though I thought he would have difficulties proving that I was driving 80 kilometers per hour, instead of the allowed 60 per hour, he insisted that I was driving too fast. After chatting for a few more minutes, he began shouting in Korean. I could hardly understand what he was saying, so I called my office on my mobile phone. I told my secretary that the policeman was correct to stop me and that I apologize.
I then passed my mobile phone to the policeman. For a moment, he was slightly bewildered, because this episode must have been his first time talking into a mobile phone. At that time, in 2006, mobile phones were limited to foreigners and a handful of senior cadres. Only two years later, when the Egyptian company Orascom set up a telecom joint venture company, the first few lucky traffic policemen could be seen with mobile phones in the street.
After a few minutes of chatting, he ended the call with my secretary. He handed me the mobile phone, and nodded to show he accepted my apologies. We said good-bye in Korean with a smile and went on our ways.
Getting in, getting out
When SARS and bird flu broke out in Asia, North Korea sealed off its borders. Vehicles, trains and passenger aircraft could no longer cross. Some months after I settled in Pyongyang, the outbreak of SARS in 2002 was bad timing for me, as I had to attend a number of business meetings in Europe, which set the direction and pace for my future work in North Korea.
Luckily for me, a couple of friendly North Korean business contacts with close ties to Air Koryo helped me secure one of the few seats on a cargo plane. Influential connections, as I have learned in the years of doing business in other Asian countries before, are crucial in getting things done and problems solved in North Korea. Around me in this plane, a handful of North Koreans and foreigners wondered whether there would be a flight back. Another concern, with the epidemic, was whether we would be “quarantined” after our return. Indeed, some people stayed abroad longer when the epidemic got worse, and for a week upon their return, were thrown in an isolated guesthouse outside Pyongyang with no internet, email and international phone. What was remarkable about this cargo plane was that a flight attendant served the handful passengers a meal with free beverage. I thought to myself, this is cargo flying with style!
I was lucky again when I returned from Europe to be allowed to fly back from Beijing to Pyongyang, this time even in a passenger plane. More importantly, I was not asked to spend the following 10 days in complete isolation in a deserted and dilapidated guesthouse. Had I returned a couple of days later, when this became a general rule for all new arrivals, I would have run into a severe headache. The problem was I brought back a long “to do” list from Europe which I would not have been able to tackle.
For several years, China Northern Airlines had an office in the diplomatic village in the same building as the Russian airline Aeroflot. Both airlines had one, or at best two, weekly flights to China and Khabarowsk, Russia respectively, and at times none at all. I was happy to see more choice and industry competition.
Sadly, after a few years, both companies closed their offices due to lack of business. Good news was the arrival of Air China with two weekly flights with modern aircraft. But Air China is a commercial airline, not a politically backed one, which meant that they were flying only during those months. That’s when they could carry sufficient Chinese tourists to Pyongyang or else they cancelled the flights.
Air China opened an office which set new standards: I was able to book not only the destination Beijing but beyond and they even delivered tickets to the customer at no extra charge. My staff, outstanding Korean patriots, urged me to fly Air Koryo instead of Air China. I answered, “Out of sympathy with you I can do without Air China’s higher quality and safety standards and the ticket delivery service. But only if Air Koryo refunds me the price difference, as Air China is much cheaper.” That argument was accepted without reply and with a smile. For them, it was a practical lesson about the market economy.
Even though much of the country is agrarian and underdeveloped, North Korea was full of small domestic airports that offered a fixed time schedule as well as chartered propeller-driven planes. Flying was convenient when I wanted to visit remote areas like Mount Paekdu, but didn’t have the time or energy to drive there and back over three days. These smaller airplanes flew relatively slowly and at a lower altitude, offering dazzling panoramas of North Korea’s mountains and valley.
Since the authorities feared espionage, they didn’t allow photographs from above. I retorted that satellites and U.S. spy planes were hovering overhead anyway, and could take better pictures than my meager camera. I didn’t make much leeway with that argument at a time when Google Earth was unknown (as it still is) to many North Koreans.
Here, I was about to fly from a small airplane at a remote destination in the mountains. I always stored my camera and mobile phone in my bag. That took away the temptation to take photographs of the scenic views during the flight.
After decades of service, Volvo taxis are still scattered around the streets of Pyongyang, although they are gradually being replaced by locally assembled cars
This car carries the license plate number “Pyongyang 50-311.” License plates show the area (Pyongyang), category (50) and vehicle number (311). Category 50 stands for a governmental ‘Foreign Community Service’ department, usually linked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The blue number plate of this car with the number 73-03 stood for Switzerland (“73”) and for car No. 3 (“-03”) of the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency.
This is the entrance of a state farm guarded by an armed guard. The slogan at the entrance calls for “Single-minded Unity” between the Korean people, the ruling Korean labor party and the party’s leadership. Buildings always carry propaganda slogans but never or extremely seldom the name of the farm, the company, the ministry or any other entity as this is considered to be of importance only to those dealing with it.
Those who have nothing to do with the entity would not need to know what is going on behind the building’s walls. One of the few places with a name I came across was—astoundingly—a pub.
The people’s license plates
For practical reasons, I had to soon learn to identify some of the government number plates. On the road, it was wise to identify cars belonging to security and military agencies, and to keep a safe distance from them. A traffic crash with a powerful figure could have made life in North Korea hard, and ruined any chance of business success.
Driving around, I could easily spot cars with number plates representing “categories 15, 16 and 17,” signifying that they belonged to the People’s Safety Agency. Policemen in blue uniforms were driving these ones. After staying in North Korea longer, I learned that a few numbers above category 17 marked cars owned by the National Security Agency, the elite body charged with intelligence gathering and investigating “political” crimes. These drivers did not wear uniforms.
In general, the lower the category of a white government license plate, the higher its car owner in the party and government hierarchy. Category 01 and 02 belong to powerful party secretaries and department directors. Cars driven by NGOs and diplomats had blue number plates. There was even a hierarchy as to which country they represented: Russian embassy cars were at the top, the blue number plate starting with 1-. Chinese diplomats followed with number plates starting with 2- and so on.
There were a wide range of exceptions. Cars with category 2.16 were given to their owners in recognition of outstanding achievements. Cars with ★-XXX were special events’ vehicles, and there were even cars with no plate numbers at all. South Korean vehicles crossing the DMZ into the Kaesong Industrial Zone, for example, hid their license plates.
I did not reveal my knowledge to the gossipy expatriate community, which chattered daily at cocktail parties in embassies and homes. The chairman of one of North Korea’s largest industrial groups once told me candidly, “We highly appreciate discreet business partners even though the business with them is legal and not subject to foreign embargoes. But given the fact that our enemies want to shut down our economy talkative foreigners, no matter how friendly and effective they are, may unintentionally harm seriously our business interests.”
I realized that other, more extroverted foreign business people were offered fewer business opportunities. I was tight-lipped. But among expatriates, I didn’t make it to the top of the popularity list.
Around 2004, rumors even began spreading that I was suspect. I heard some stories falsely alleging that I harbored close ties to the leadership, while a few blabbermouths claimed I was possibly involved in drug trafficking, cash counterfeiting and the country’s nuclear weapons program. The rumors intensified with a growing hysteria over the nuclear program in the mid-2000s.
But one European diplom
at, frustrated with the policy of Western countries, sympathized with me. He thought that doing business was a promising way to open and change the hitherto isolated country and the course of things for the better. He kept me informed and regretted that more than a few people working in NGOs and embassies considered me a “rogue businessman.”
To avoid intrusive questions from diplomats and NGOs, I minimized my participation at cocktail parties and the like. And I always gave a true excuse for not talking about my business projects. “It would take too long to explain this rather demanding project and my possible involvement,” I would say. At times I felt like copying the ways diplomats expressed themselves so well without disclosing any substance.
Diplomats and representatives of international organizations, on the other hand, received comfortable salaries and didn’t have to worry about the day-to-day stresses of pleasing clients. They were also typically awarded substantial “hardship” bonuses simply for the inconvenience of living in North Korea, and lucrative promotion prospects after a few years abroad. NGO employees at German Agro Action or French “Première Urgence” were paid much less, but still lived a cozy life. For the most part, they hung around for up to a year and then headed out, satisfying their taste for a quick adventure in North Korea.
I quickly found that expatriates were given venerated status on the roads. For instance, I was told by my North Korean staff that I would not need a North Korean driving license. I asked the officials to let me take the driving tests anyway to be in conformity with the law and not to be dependent on arbitrary circumstances. I probably didn’t answer correctly a number of questions of the questionnaire and I thought I had failed the test, but the officials nevertheless passed me possibly out of sympathy.