My Great Korea Move

I’ve never been to North Korea.

My travel agent, who claims to care deeply about my leisure time, insists Faliraki is more my scene.

She’s right, of course. Starvation, collectivised or otherwise, has never been top of my holiday checklist. Besides, all those Workers’ Party public broadcasts and air-raid drills are bound to interfere with cocktail hour.

Still, being the inquisitive boob that I am, I keep asking myself the same question: can a guy be open-minded about a place that wants to close his mind down? And if so, does he need his head examined?

As regular readers of this column will be all too aware, my mind is as open as a 24-hour superstore. Cleaner, too. Unlike President Bush, just because I’ve never visited a place doesn’t mean I’m not interested in it (unless you count New Zealand).

Call me an egghead, but I can’t help wanting to know more about a country that wants to blow me up.

My friends don’t understand my fascination. “Who cares about North Korea?” they guffaw. “Let’s get drunk and steal some traffic cones.”

I know what you’re thinking – that my friends sound like typical English buffoons. Well, you’d be right. However, as the powers in Washington figured out long ago, there’s nothing special about the English – nothing that can’t be squashed by a Brussels diktat anyway.

As a bureaucratic rule, Europeans tend not to concern themselves with North Korea. The average European (to whom I spoke last week in the average European café, sipping average coffee) is too busy opposing the real threats to global security – Disney, Starbucks, KFC – to waste their time worrying about Pyongyang.

To bespectacled European eyes, the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea is one of the few communist utopias left on earth. It is to be celebrated for standing up to US hegemonic power and proving that other worlds are possible.

But in this instance, Je ne suis pas European. I want to find answers to the bigger questions – like, is it true that supreme “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il wears platform shoes and a bouffant in order to appear taller than his mere one-point-five-metres?

I took it up with my editor. “Can you get me into North Korea?” I asked him.

“I’ve been trying for two years now,” he sighed. “They just won’t take you.”

As I exited the gates of his mansion, the hounds in hot pursuit, things weren’t looking good. But, as Charles Lindbergh might have said, if there’s one thing I fly in the face of, it’s adversity.

I decided I’d had enough of this horse-trading. All I was getting in return for my prize stallions was mangy donkeys. I’d had enough mangy donkeys for one lifetime.

I packed a suitcase and told my landlady to go to hell. Within the hour I was crammed into a DC-10 with about 300,000 fellow hacks, destination Beijing.

If there’s another thing I fly in the face of, it’s the passenger opposite me.

Beijing, by the way, was about to play flight attendant to six-nation talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis that Washington refuses to call a crisis.

Another day, another impossibly complicated political logjam.

The passenger count was half North Korea expert, half punished hack. One half were going over their latest journal articles, the other half were going nowhere.

I moved to the half with a future, and took the opportunity to test the water – sparkling, with a dash of lemon.

The first guy I talked to claimed to have lived in North Korea for three years. I told him how I didn’t think anyone lived in North Korea for three years, putting the emphasis on “lived”. He laughed then showed me where his leg used to be before he ate it – “In order to have lived”.

A touching story – and typical, I feel, of the struggles of modern journalism.

The next guy I talked to was more forthcoming. For starters, this guy was a woman. Her fascination with North Korea stemmed from a childhood penchant for pulling the legs off disgusting creatures.

“Tell me,” I said, “is there any truth in the myth that when Kim Jong-il was born on the peak of Mount Paektu, a double rainbow appeared in the sky together with a bright star?”

“What am I,” she said, “a meteorologist? It was probably just a missile test.”

“Alright then,” I persisted, “is it true that Kim penned six operas in two years, and if so, who sings castrato? And what about the “peerless” leader’s philosophy of juche, or self-reliance, did he come up with that one as he lounged around glugging gallons of Hennessy VSOP in one of his thousands of luxury villas? Is he really a playboy whose pulling power is so great he has to send his army out to kidnap his dates? And how about his definitive writings on cinema, and his taste for Friday the 13th slasher movies? Is there anything this man can’t do?”

She pondered for a second. “Tell the truth?”

With a thud we hit the runway of Beijing International. A few ironic cheers rang from the back of the plane.

I was met at the gate by Mr. Lee, my “guide”. I told him I never requested a “guide”. “Is no problem,” he said, as he chained himself to my ankle. “Now, you promise, you not write anything?”

I promised. And now I’m breaking my promise. Sorry, Mr. Lee. That’s the way the fortune cookie crumbles.

To my surprise, the multilateral talks were held behind closed bamboo screens. Access to press was strictly forbidden. Anyone caught with a notepad was to be executed within the hour. I wasn’t that eager to please my editor.

Instead, I was forced to take my leads from the KCNA, who I’d hate to accuse of bias, but ...

Anyway, with a limited knowledge of People’s Democratic Republic of Korean, I managed to piece together a story.

Here is my exclusive:

North Korea, the world’s leading economic power, has no nuclear weapons and makes no money from the trafficking of hard drugs and deadly weapons. This current crisis, which will inevitably lead to war, is all the fault of the United States, the poorest and most gutless nation on earth. Actually, there is no crisis and all is well. The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea has no choice but to defend itself from the US aggressors by nuking Seoul. Maybe Japan, too. The “Dear Leader” is a kind and gentle man, whose miracle economic policies are triggering violent jealousy in lesser nations. Did bloodsucker George W. Bush receive 100% of the vote in his banana republic elections? Me no think so!

The End. Approved by authority of the PDRK.