Banal British Chat

I read an article on the BBC news website about an American woman being granted a rare tourist visa to visit North Korea, which you can see here. I had up until the other day been very up for going to North Korea, to experience the bizarre anachronism of life there, but then I saw a documentary from Dispatches the other night which showed recent video footage smuggled out of the country by members of a fledgling resistance, and I've changed my mind entirely.

It's no secret that Pyongyang is a showcase capital where only the most loyal supporters of the regime are allowed to live so as to give the best possible impression to visitors there. But elsewhere in the country, ordinary people starve while UN food aid is sold off at a profit, people who voice dissent are either publicly executed so as to set an example or sent to "re-education camps" where an estimated 200,000 political prisoners are held in what are effectively gulags from which they never return. It is not uncommon to see dead bodies lying abandoned in the street.

The BBC article was asking for readers' opinions, so I wrote largely what I've written above, questioning the ethics of visiting a country like this and that to visit Pyongyang knowing such brutality is occurring elsewhere is to participate willingly in the regime's propaganda. They don't seem to have published my comment, but they emailed me asking for me to take part in a pilot radio show for the BBC World Service and discuss these issues.

So I said yes, thinking that this could be a really interesting discussion and since it's only a pilot and not being broadcasted, if I screw up, then never mind. I spent some time this afternoon trying to remember stuff about the Korean war that I studied at Cambridge and was all ready to pontificate at 7.15 this evening, when they said they'd ring me.

They call and put me through to the show, which has the American woman and some photographer on it, talking about their experiences of the country. They asked me whether I had thought of visiting the North, and I replied that yes, I had, but then I saw the documentary and it changed my mind.

I expected a follow-up question to ask me why, but none came. Instead they asked the American what she thought of something else that was completely unrelated to what I'd just said. And then the presenter says:

"So as you all seem to have an affection for North Korea, my final quick question to the three of you is 'what do you think needs to be done to resolve the Korean crisis?' We're wrapping up now, so Ashley, ten seconds."

Ten seconds to resolve the Korean crisis? If only.

"Well, I think we need more dialogue and diplomacy from both sides and that the Americans need to be more positive in their approach... blah blah blah." Boring.

And affection?! I wouldn't say I have affection for a country that's repressing and murdering its own people on a massive scale, has its agents abduct Japanese schoolchildren off beaches and threatens to turn Seoul and Tokyo into a "sea of fire" with its massive arsenal of conventional weapons and/or nuclear weapons.

What a stupid show. I hope the pilot show crashes and burns and the series never gets the green light.