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An odd news item popped up this week on ESPN Soccernet. The sports site announced that the North Korean football team has accepted an invitation to train in Zimbabwe before the World Cup — the only one of five invited nations to accept the offer as a way “to boost the tourism industry with a visit.”
The other countries were England, the United States, Australia and Brazil.
The odd thing isn’t that North Korea accepted the offer. What’s strange is that North Korea was invited as a way to boost tourism.
North Korea's men's soccer team
To be sure, a visit by England or Brazil, and to a lesser extent the United States or Australia, might help bring rabid soccer fans from neighboring South Africa or Botswana into Zimbabwe. It’s harder to imagine soccer aficionados clamoring to get a look at the DPRK squad, which has qualified only twice for the World Cup. (Is anyone outside of North Korea wearing Choe Kum Chol’s jersey? If you want to, please note that for less than $20 you can get your very own team shirt here. An “I survived Yodok” shirt will cost you much more.)
You can’t blame Zimbabwe for trying. It’s right next door to South Africa, which hosts the Cup this year. And it’s obviously hurting for tourism dollars. Runaway inflation (so high that it was nearly unmeasurable in 2008 and 2009), a 95 percent unemployment rate and political upheaval under the leadership of corrupt President Robert Mugabe, are evidently overshadowing the country’s must-see cultural and natural attractions.
The goal, according to Zimbabwe Tourism Minister Walter Mzembi, was to bring in 100,000 tourists before and after the tournament. It’s a modest goal. To put it in perspective, Ft. Lauderdale gets nearly 400,000 overseas visitors each year.
This is by no means to demean the beauty or charm of Zimbabwe or its people. It has its own unique characteristics that, in less volatile times, would make it a destination for a certain percentage of Africans on holiday. But inviting North Korea as a tourism tool is like asking John Wayne Gacy to speak at a clown convention. Those who might show up will probably stay home to wash their (orange) hair.
It all seems so very odd. Yet not so strange when one reads in the Daily NK that Mugabe is “a long standing North Korean ally.” Ah, then. That explains the invitation. But not Zimbabwe’s tourism campaign.
Zimbabwe, do you want tourists? Here’s what you do. Get a new president, replace your council of economic advisers, pick better friends and ask your official tourism site to get a new web designer.
Out of Nowhere readers know that North Korea holds a special place of loathing with me (see: “Glorious Lodestar-2 rocket reaches bottom of Pacific” and “More bad news from North Korea.”)
A new report from the Korean Bar Association does nothing to temper my feelings about the dictatorship of Kim Jong-Ill and his brutal policies.
An excerpt from the The Washington Post, which reported Monday on the new study and the plight of those in forced labor camps:
The ongoing policy of making North Koreans pay for the sins of their fathers means that forced labor and imprisonment can span three generations, even if the children and grandchildren have lived compliant lives.
Sadly, other countries are doing little about this state of affairs, perhaps because it’s not clear what can be done about a country impenetrable to outsiders, billigerant in the face of international pressure and poised to strike its critics with military force.
In the meantime, maybe it’s possible to raise an awareness and outrage that will result in political solutions. I’m trying to do my small part in that regard, and, for the sake of the Korean people, I hope others will too.
The situation on the Korean peninsula just keeps getting worse.
First came the recent firing of six North Korean long-range missiles, an act seen as a veiled threat to both Asia and parts of the United States.
Then, on Monday, the North tested a nuclear bomb. When the international community responded by threatening to stop North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction, that country called the threat a declaration of war and said it will no longer observe the armistice that has existed between the two Koreas since the 1950s. If any of its vessels are stopped, the North said it will launch a ”powerful military strike” in response.
That’s not all. Now come reports that surveillance planes have spotted steam rising from nuclear enrichment facilities that had suspended activities during non-proliferation negotiations.
Finally, North Korea has released a statement saying that it ”will not guarantee safe passage” of South Korean or American vessels around five disputed islands now held by the South.
While the North Korean government has forever been known as a billigerant,
Rockettes? Or just Rockets?
tough-talking regime, these events signal an escalation that has many international experts scratching their heads in bewilderment. Aiden Foster-Carter, a Korean analyst writing for the BBC, proposes two theories about why North Korea, a country that desperately wants and needs international respect, would take such an irrational course.
One possibility is that it is simply a ploy to get President Obama’s attention. But, Foster-Carter notes, Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il already had that; Obama has declared himself open to finding a resolution to North Korea’s complaints and has softened the hardline approach to other rogue nations like Cuba.
“(North Korea) did not need a bomb or rocket to blast a way in and get a hearing in Washington. To the contrary, these were bound to backfire,” he writes.
Foster-Carter advances another theory:
“Or maybe Kim Jong-il would have made peace, but hardliners used his illness last year to seize the helm and batten down the hatches.
Yet abandoning diplomacy altogether is hardly a serious long-term option for a failed state reliant on Chinese aid to feed its hungry people.”
Also writing for the BBC today, correspondent Paul Reynolds notes what everybody already knows: that there are no easy answers.
“North Korea presents a classic example of the dilemmas involved in dealing with a state whose behaviour is predictably unpredictable.
The basic rule for dealing with such states is that there is no rule.
But a major consideration is how powerful they are. In 2002 Libya could be pressured into admitting and giving up a secret nuclear programme because it was weak and exposed.
North Korea has a million-strong army, with more than 4,000 tanks and about 18,000 artillery pieces, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Its forces are encamped only a short distance from the South Korean capital, Seoul. An Iraq-style invasion is not possible.
So options are limited.”
North Korea doesn’t need to declare war on the South, since the two countries never signed a peace treaty after the end of the Korean War. Kim and his government have long told their people that South Korea and the West are looking for an excuse to resume that war.
Now they appear to be poking a stick into a den of grizzly bears in hopes that their wish will finally come true. The irony is that no country — least of all North Korea – would emerge a winner in a conflict like that.
(See also “North Korea: A Glimpse Inside a Secret State.” )
North Korea is at it again. Last week, the government in Pyongyang announced it was preparing to launch a satellite missile. Those in the West, including the United States, suspect North Korea is actually planning to test a missile capable of carrying a warhead to the United States.
Of all the hyperbole spouted by some in our government regarding “rogue nations” over the years, they have it right when it comes to North Korea.
Order before midnight tonight
North Korea is one of those countries we hear little about, except when its leaders make news by threatening to launch ballistic missiles or walk out of talks over their nuclear capabilities. In fact, it is one of the least understood and most repressive countries in the world.
Its leaders like it that way, allowing little information to filter in and less to filter out — even to the detriment of millions of North Koreans.
The communist state was established after World War II. The country’s charismatic leader, Kim Il Sung (though he died in 1994, he gets top billing even today as “Great Leader”), later invaded South Korea in an attempt at reunification. Children today are taught that the South invaded the north and that the rest of the world is waiting to attack.
Kim Jong Il
Under Kim’s son, Kim Jong Il (“Dear Leader”), those who cross the government are either imprisoned, killed or sent to the hills, where they must forage for food.
Desperately poor, the country has foundered under the pompadoured Kim-the-younger, who personally took over responsibility for the country’s agricultural program when he came to power. Centrally planned with little expertise, agricultural and trade policies are blamed directly for the starvation of millions during the 1990s.
While the country says it wants only respect, it seems to be doing little to help its own cause, instead relying on a philosophy of self-reliance, or “Juche.” Even though it has come to the conclusion that it can’t feed its people without foreign aid, it resists the kind of broader trade that might help it light city streets and benefit its economy.
If you want to get a better understanding of what this country is all about, I suggest reading “Through the Looking Glass,” a book Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hessig wrote for the Brookings Institute in 2000. It was an eye opener for me when I read it several years ago, detailing everything from the cult of personality built around the elder Kim to the fact that radios in North Korea have fixed dials so that only state radio broadcasts can be received.
While you’re at it, you might visit the official Web site of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (hosted in another country). There, you can listen to patriotic music (check out the “Song of General Kim Il Sung) and order stylish ball caps, mousepads, refrigerator magnets, tote bags and other souvenirs imprinted with inspirational depictions of soldiers on the move. For fifty euros, you can also join the Korean Friendship Association and support the country in all its worthwhile endeavors.
Does North Korea matter? Absolutely. If any of the three countries “W” designated as the axis of evil deserve the designation, it is this one. While recent evidence show some change, the country in the past financed much of its economy with illicit drug sales, trade of weapons and counterfeiting of money, pharmaceuticals and cigarettes. It has a large and well-trained army just across the border from one of our major allies (South Korea) with the stated long-term goal of reunification. It keeps itself poised for the war it tells its people is coming, and its “screw-you” foreign policy — as evidenced during the current nuclear crisis — is about as frightening as any country’s could possibly be.
I guess we can hope their missiles are all duds or that the people will outlive the ideology that now permeates the culture. It may be awhile, since Kim Jong Il has designated his son as his successor when the day comes.
Neither should we all hold our breath in hopes of a popular rebellion. Effectively isolating his country from the rest of the world, “Dear Leader” seems to have convinced his subjects that people in the the rest of the world live as miserably as North Koreans or that death is better than what the West has to offer.
