Chinese Dissident Artist Ai Weiwei Releases Gangnam Style Parody

Business Insider, Adam Taylor, 24 October 2012

Ai Weiwei, the recently jailed Chinese artist, has today released his parody of South Korean pop hit "Gangnam Style".

The video appears pretty low budget — the song hasn't been re-recorded and the video mostly features Ai and his team dancing around — but the message behind the song is pretty interesting.

Chinese state media had recently been hand-wringing about the number of Chinese copies of Gangnam Style, wondering if the country truly had what it took to actually create its own worldwide hits. Of course, many observers have noted that a lot of Ai's own art often relies on references to other artworks, yet he is probably China's best known artists.

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Day of action for Malala and girls' right to school

BBC News, Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education, 23 October 2012

A million people around the world signed a petition backing Malala Yousafzai

Knowledge economy 

• World's oldest undeciphered writing
• Global pledge on school missed
• End of empire for western universities?
• New York's tech-shaped future

Gordon Brown

Almost one million people worldwide have signed their name to call on both the Pakistan government and the United Nations to achieve Malala Yousafzai's aim - that every girl has the opportunity to go to school.

Two weeks on, the wave of support for the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban, shows no sign of diminishing.

Now is the time for action on the second Millennium Development Goal for universal primary education.

The events of the last fortnight have shown that the global collective willpower to deliver on this aim is there.

The words "I am Malala" are not only a defiant challenge to the Taliban but a bold assertion that every single girl and boy should have the chance of an education.

A few weeks before her shooting, Malala told friends of her determination to campaign for the 32 million girls around the world who are not at school.

Out of school

By declaring 10 November - one month after the attempted assassination - "Malala and the 32 million girls day", we can start to make Malala's dream come true.

I will call for a global day of action, when I meet President Zardari of Pakistan next month to hand him our petitions and ask him to lead governmental changes in policy to secure girls' education in his and Malala's country. 

Gordon Brown: For 61m children
without schools "equality of opportunity
 remains a hollow dream".

For decades there has been a dangerous assumption that we are making year-on-year progress towards universal education - and yet the most recent figures published by UNESCO in their Global Monitoring Report show that 61 million children don't receive an education.

A further 200 million remain illiterate despite attending school. Equality of opportunity remains a hollow dream.

Pakistan is a case study of the challenge ahead, showing how much there's still to be done if we are to meet the Millennium Development Goal target. Some five million don't receive an education, three million of whom are girls.

This means that Pakistan has 49.5 million illiterate adults, two-thirds of them female.

What is just as shocking is that educational spending is not rising - as we might assume - but falling, from an already meagre 2.6% of Gross National Product in 1999 to 2.3%.

This represents just 9% of government spending (the equivalent figure for spending on the military is seven times higher).

Child labour

Pakistan's continuing failure is sadly replicated elsewhere. In some parts of the Indian sub-continent as well as in sub-Saharan Africa, one quarter of all children are out of school, amid worrying evidence that past gains are being reversed as aid for education is cut.

Students in Karachi hold up pictures of the wounded schoolgirl
Malala Yousufzai

Despite the recent creation of initiatives such as "child marriage-free zones" in Bangladesh, every year some 10 million girls globally are forced into loveless marriages - and out of the classroom.

Even though there was a successful Indian march against child labour, 15 million children under 14 are not in school today because they are working full time - on cocoa plantations, down mines, or carrying out other hazardous occupations.

We have around 40 months to meet our deadline for universal education. We have one chance left to deliver in these three years. If the tragic story of Malala tells us anything, it is that we must do all we can to achieve it.

Action is beginning to coalesce. Last month a new initiative, Education First, launched by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, has brought together every UN and World Bank agency concerned with education, to offer poor performing governments, including Pakistan, a chance to deliver new school-places and train more teachers.

Every one of the countries with out-of-school children will be asked to draw up a plan setting out its precise needs in terms of teachers, school building and financing. At the core of each plan will be strategies for policing an end to child labour, enforcing the law against child marriage and clamping down on discrimination against girls.

Last chance

In April next year a joint summit between international agencies and governments will be held by Ban Ki-moon and the President of the World Bank Jim Kim at which precise plans will be finalised along with timetables and budgets.

Malala Yousafzai was brought to the UK for hospital treatment

During my visit to Pakistan next month I will begin this process with the Pakistan government and work on an agreed timetable.

The demonstrations, protests and online action we have seen in the last two weeks should inspire world leaders into action in agreeing the way forward.

Malala's personal campaign may have been halted temporarily, but the millions who now speak up on her behalf must now come together as one in the run up to 10 November so that we must wait no longer for action on education.

Related Articles:

Stand With Malala on November 10th

The other children of Pakistan's war

Malala Yousafzai can make smooth recovery, doctors say

Pakistani girl shot over activism in Swat valley, claims Taliban


Archangel Michael: The Declaration of Human Freedom

"... Children are meant to live lives under the beneficent protection of all, free of exploitation, with unhindered access to the necessities of life, education, and health care ..."

Archangel Michael: It’s Time to Let Go of the Old (AAM channeled by Linda Dillon) - New

“……

AAM: Let us speak first to the terrible — and I use “terrible” in its truest sense — terrible issue of racism, of hatred, of control. Because all racism, all fanaticism, whether it is political or religious or economic — there is a great deal of economic fanaticism on your planet still, and you see it every day -  is bred from a very peculiar mix, and it is bred from fear, entitlement, and what you may choose to call karma and what I will refer to as some past-life bleed-through.

These people are going to have a very hard time if they choose to resist and fight. And that is why we ask each of you to make sure that you are the transmitters and the beamers, but that you are not becoming involved in that morass of chaos, that they undoubtedly are creating and will create.

It is all stemming from a lack of self worth and self love, an unknowing of deservingness and of worth. Because when you are in your heart and you know, innately, deeply, fully of your connection to the One, of your divinity, and that you hold that love not in a superficial way that we so often witness upon your planet… it has improved, but it is still there. When there is really love there can be no hatred or disgust with those that you deem or designate as less than. It is such an absurd construct, that. Did we not understand the various levels and the emanations, we would simply shake our heads. So will this be wrenched from them? They have a choice, and, if they choose to continue to cling, then of course the choice is they will be relocated elsewhere. But what I am also saying, individually — and you think, “How can you do this, Michael, individually to millions upon millions of millions of people?” Well, I suggest you leave that to us. They will have their confrontations with their egos, and they will also have their opportunities to see their divinity and to acknowledge the equality of all beings.

For many, it will be extremely uncomfortable. But it is necessary. That is why we have encouraged so many to do the work, so that you are not at the last minute being wrenched in this way. That is partially what Syria is about. That is what Milala in Afghanistan is about. It is the choice, for people to look at that and say, “How can this be? And how could I hold such hatred in my heart?”

Now, these examples have been brought up to you time and again. The shootings, long ago, Martin Luther King, the freedom fighters, the executions, in Iraq and Iran. These are the mirrors that are held up to those who think they are better than, because that is the end result of hatred and entitlement.

It is pathetic.

SB: Lord, could I intervene at this moment and say that photos have been produced that suggest that Milala’s shooting was staged. There’s a photo of her not having any throat wound. There’s a photo of her walking to the helicopter. Was it staged, or not?

AAM: No, it was not staged. It was a brutal attack.

SB: All right. Thank you.

AAM: Was it staged by us? Yes!

SB: What do you mean by that, Lord?

AAM: I mean it is an opportunity. Is it real in physical form? Yes. Is it real in terms of an opportunity for people to say, “This type of persecution has need to end”? Yes.  ……….”

The other children of Pakistan's war

BBC News, 23 October 2012

Related Stories 

• Taliban policy under scrutiny
• Portrait of the girl blogger
• Pakistan media condemn attack

Malala Yousafzai is one of thousands
of Pakistani children whose education
has been interrupted

The Taliban's attempt to kill teenaged activist Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan earlier this month underlines the dangers that the militant conflict holds for the country's schoolchildren.

Tens of thousands of school pupils have been displaced along with their families from areas across Pakistan's tribal belt on the Afghan border where the Taliban have carved sanctuaries for themselves.

Thousands were deprived of an education as the militants carried out a persistent campaign against secular education, destroying nearly 1,000 schools since 2006.

Years of military operations in these areas have led to further destruction.

While militants have been driven out from some areas, the territory they once occupied has not yet been fully secured under a civilian administration.

And many significant sanctuaries still remain, especially in North Waziristan, parts of South Waziristan, the Orakzai region and the Khyber region.

Outspoken critic

From these sanctuaries, militants have been able to conduct raids on Pakistan's military as well as civilian targets deep inside the country, breaching security cordons and creating an enduring sense of uncertainty.

Malala was an outspoken critic of the Taliban's opposition to girls' education, but she was only a schoolgirl and never believed that they would consider her a serious threat. 

Officials say that many schools have
 been forced to close throughout 2012
because of Taliban threats

But while she was not the only child victim of this conflict, she may have been the only one targeted because of her views.

A year ago, Taliban gunmen ambushed a school bus south of Peshawar city, killing at least four boys and injuring more than 12, including two seven-year-old girls.

A Taliban spokesman in the nearby Khyber tribal region later said it was a response to the local tribes who had raised an armed volunteer force to resist the Taliban presence in Peshawar's southern outskirts.

Children have suffered in other ways as well.

Pakistani officials claim more than 30,000 civilians and over 3,000 soldiers have been killed in the "war on terror" since late 2001. It is not known how many of them were children.

The latest United Nations report on the issue, released in April 2012, says that at least 57 children were killed in Pakistan during 2011 alone - mainly by landmine explosions, roadside bombs, shelling and targeted attacks.

This figure would be much higher if casualties from the country's unending sectarian attacks are included.

Recruiting and indoctrinating

There are also recurrent reports of children being killed as unintended targets of drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas.

The CIA-operated unmanned planes have carried out a persistent campaign against militants in their north-western tribal sanctuaries.

The media do not have free access to these areas, but in November 2011, British legal charity Reprieve arranged for a number of tribesmen to travel to Islamabad to protest against drone strikes.

The delegation included boys allegedly maimed by drone strikes, and men narrating eyewitness accounts of civilians, including children, killed in those attacks.

None of this can be independently verified.

What is confirmed, though, is the fact that the Taliban have been recruiting and indoctrinating easily-impressionable teenage boys as suicide bombers for attacks in Pakistan.

In February 2011, they used a 12-year-old boy to penetrate the well-fortified garrison in the north-western city of Mardan to attack army recruits.

Wearing the uniform of a school located inside the garrison area, the boy managed to slip past several security check posts and detonate the explosives vest he was wearing at a parade ground where the recruits were doing physical training.

Teenaged boys have been indoctrinated
 by the Taliban for suicide attacks across
Pakistan

At least 30 people were killed, most of them army recruits.

Three months after that incident, the BBC interviewed another would-be suicide bomber who was caught by the police.

Omar Fidai, 14, said he was part of a double-attack plan at a Sufi shrine in Dera Ghazi Khan city. He was to detonate his explosives near the rescue workers after his partner - also a teenager - had blown himself up killing more than 40 people.

But his vest did not explode properly. He was injured, but survived.

He said he was trained at a camp for suicide bombers in the North Waziristan tribal region, and was given to believe that he would go straight to heaven once he had killed the infidels and the heretics.

The UN's 2012 report has recorded 11 incidents during 2011 in which teenage boys, some as young as 13, were used by armed groups to carry out suicide attacks.

Related Articles:

Stand With Malala on November 10th

Malala Yousafzai can make smooth recovery, doctors say

Pakistani girl shot over activism in Swat valley, claims Taliban

Archangel Michael: It’s Time to Let Go of the Old (AAM channeled by Linda Dillon) - New

“……

AAM: Let us speak first to the terrible — and I use “terrible” in its truest sense — terrible issue of racism, of hatred, of control. Because all racism, all fanaticism, whether it is political or religious or economic — there is a great deal of economic fanaticism on your planet still, and you see it every day -  is bred from a very peculiar mix, and it is bred from fear, entitlement, and what you may choose to call karma and what I will refer to as some past-life bleed-through.

These people are going to have a very hard time if they choose to resist and fight. And that is why we ask each of you to make sure that you are the transmitters and the beamers, but that you are not becoming involved in that morass of chaos, that they undoubtedly are creating and will create.

It is all stemming from a lack of self worth and self love, an unknowing of deservingness and of worth. Because when you are in your heart and you know, innately, deeply, fully of your connection to the One, of your divinity, and that you hold that love not in a superficial way that we so often witness upon your planet… it has improved, but it is still there. When there is really love there can be no hatred or disgust with those that you deem or designate as less than. It is such an absurd construct, that. Did we not understand the various levels and the emanations, we would simply shake our heads. So will this be wrenched from them? They have a choice, and, if they choose to continue to cling, then of course the choice is they will be relocated elsewhere. But what I am also saying, individually — and you think, “How can you do this, Michael, individually to millions upon millions of millions of people?” Well, I suggest you leave that to us. They will have their confrontations with their egos, and they will also have their opportunities to see their divinity and to acknowledge the equality of all beings.

For many, it will be extremely uncomfortable. But it is necessary. That is why we have encouraged so many to do the work, so that you are not at the last minute being wrenched in this way. That is partially what Syria is about. That is what Milala in Afghanistan is about. It is the choice, for people to look at that and say, “How can this be? And how could I hold such hatred in my heart?”

Now, these examples have been brought up to you time and again. The shootings, long ago, Martin Luther King, the freedom fighters, the executions, in Iraq and Iran. These are the mirrors that are held up to those who think they are better than, because that is the end result of hatred and entitlement.

It is pathetic.

SB: Lord, could I intervene at this moment and say that photos have been produced that suggest that Milala’s shooting was staged. There’s a photo of her not having any throat wound. There’s a photo of her walking to the helicopter. Was it staged, or not?

AAM: No, it was not staged. It was a brutal attack.

SB: All right. Thank you.

AAM: Was it staged by us? Yes!

SB: What do you mean by that, Lord?

AAM: I mean it is an opportunity. Is it real in physical form? Yes. Is it real in terms of an opportunity for people to say, “This type of persecution has need to end”? Yes.  ……….”

Couple’s love bridges Myanmar religious divide

Tribune.pk, AFP, October 23, 2012

Born a Buddhist, Rohin Mullah fell in love with a girl of Rohingya minority
group shunned by Myanmar society at large. PHOTO: AFP

Praying with a Quran on his knees in a mud-strewn camp, Rohin Mullah is one of thousands of Muslims uprooted by sectarian bloodshed in Myanmar. But the former monk’s story is far from normal.

Born a Buddhist, he fell in love with a girl on the other side of the religious divide — a member of the Rohingya minority group shunned by Myanmar society at large.

He has since been ostracised by his former neighbours, lost his home and lives in a camp for displaced people in western Rakhine state, which is reeling from an upsurge of Buddhist-Muslim violence since June.

“The Rakhine side hated me when I converted to Islam,” he said.

Mullah, 37, who changed his name from Kyaw Tun Aung, has had no contact with his parents since he married 10 years ago.

“For three days, my mother asked me why I was going to Islam, and I said that I didn’t like Buddhism, that I thought it was not the right religion,” he recalled.

His wife Amina, a round-faced 30-year-old with her hair tucked under a headscarf, said that despite the lack of tolerance for their marriage, they had “a very happy life” together.

“But since the violence, our life is hard,” she added.

Mullah, a construction worker, lived with his wife and three children in Rayngwesu, a Muslim district of the Rakhine state capital Sittwe, until clashes engulfed their neighbourhood in June.

He said the family’s home was one of the first to be torched.

Mullah’s background as a Rakhine Buddhist — who spent four years as a monk before converting one-and-a-half decades ago — did not help protect his home.

“Monks remembered me from the monastery, and they attacked my family and destroyed everything in my house,” he said.

Amina has not met her in-laws.

“I have never even seen them,” she said, adding that her husband was “a good Muslim”.

Their situation is unusual in Rakhine, despite estimates of around 800,000 Rohingya living in the state.

There are “not more than 100” mixed marriage couples, said Abu Tahay, a leader of the National Democratic Party for Development, which campaigns for the rights of the Rohingya — considered by the United Nations to be one of the world’s most persecuted minorities.

“Some people meet and fall in love in school or doing business,” he said, but few opportunities for inter-religious courtship exist between the communities.

Oo Hla Saw, general secretary of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, said he did know of one Muslim woman who had converted to Buddhism to marry a Rakhine, but “generally, Rakhine people do not accept mixed couples”.

A long history of discrimination and prejudice has left the Rohingya stateless, with restrictions placed on their movements and scant access to public services.

They are considered by the government and many ordinary people to be illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

June’s violence left about 90 people dead, according to official figures, although some rights groups estimate many more may have died. Three people were killed in the latest outbreak of violence on Tuesday.

Thousands from both communities were left homeless after whole villages were burned to the ground.

Now Mullah shares the fate of more than 50,000 Muslims, mainly Rohingya, who are housed in several wretched camps in the state, unable to go home.

For more than four months the family has lived with around 1,000 others in the Dabang camp on the outskirts of Sittwe.

Their flimsy white tent, lashed to a palm tree and bearing the slogan “Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Humanity”, is only a few metres square and pitched in thick mud as the monsoon drags on — a particular hardship as they struggle to look after their children including a six-month-old baby.

There is little sign of an end in sight — the fighting appears to have deepened animosities between the two communities, with growing calls among Buddhists for the Rohingya to be removed.

But Mullah and his wife said they have no regrets about choosing each other.

They even hope that one day they will be able to return to the lives they knew before and help reconcile the two communities.

“I want to go back to the city, where I lived for so many years,” Mullah said. “I would be very happy to live with Rakhine people.”

Afghan man kills wife for working: police

Google – AFP, 22 October 2012 

Afghan policemen board the back of a police pick up truck at a police

training centre south of Herat in September (AFP/File, Aref Karimi)

KABUL — An Afghan man stabbed his wife to death because she worked for an NGO outside the home, police said Monday after arresting the suspect in the western province of Herat.

"Kulsoom was stabbed eight times by her husband on Friday afternoon because she was working," provincial police spokesman Noor Khan Nekzad told AFP.

"We have arrested the murderer, Abdul Rahim, who killed his wife," Nekzad said.

The couple had been married for six years and had two children.

The killing occurred nearly a week after a 20-year-old woman, Mah Gul, was beheaded in the same province by her in-laws after she refused to go into prostitution.

Abdul Qader Rahimi, the regional director of the government-backed human rights commission in western Afghanistan, said violence against women had dramatically increased in the region recently.

"There is no doubt violence against women has increased. So far this year we have registered 100 cases of violence against women in the western regions," he said, adding that many cases go unreported.

Last year, in a case that made international headlines, police rescued a teenage girl who was beaten and locked up in a toilet for five months after she defied her in-laws who tried to force her into prostitution.

Qatari emir to visit Gaza Tuesday: Hamas

AFP, 21 October 2012

Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani in September2012 

(AFP/File, Emmanuel Dunand)

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani will visit Gaza on Tuesday in the first such visit by an Arab leader since Hamas took over in 2007, sources close to the ruling Islamist movement said.

"The emir of Qatar will arrive in Gaza on Tuesday," a source close to the Hamas government told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Tomorrow (Monday), a Qatari delegation will come to Gaza to prepare the programme and discuss details of the visit."

Earlier, the Shihab news agency which is close to Hamas quoted an unnamed official from the movement as saying: "The emir of Qatar will come to Gaza on Tuesday to open several projects in the strip."

It will be the first visit to the Palestinian enclave by an Arab head of state since the territory was occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The emir will also be one of Gaza's most high-profile international visitors since Hamas ousted the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in June 2007.

The official Qatari news agency QNA reported that the emir telephoned Abbas on Sunday to discuss bilateral ties and also received a call from Hamas premier Ismail Haniya for talks that centred on the Palestinian situation.

Abbas confirmed the conversation in a statement, saying he received a call from the Qatari emir saying he intended to visit Gaza and Qatari development projects there.

"President Abbas welcomes Qatari efforts in Gaza," the official WAFA news agency reported, stressing "the need to preserve the unity of the Palestinian territories and put an end to the division" between Fatah and Hamas.

Qatar in February brokered talks between Abbas and Hamas's exiled political chief Khaled Meshaal, who has shifted his political base from war-torn Damascus to Doha, in a bid to promote Palestinian unity.

Last month, Mohammed al-Emadi, Qatar's envoy to the Hamas-run territory, said Doha was to invest $254 million (195 million euros) in rebuilding Gaza.

He said the project would involve the construction of roads, housing and infrastructure, as well as agricultural development.

On Saturday, Emadi told AFP that Cairo had given permission for all the necessary building materials to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

Over the past year, diplomatic ties between Gaza and Qatar have warmed.

In January this year, Haniya paid his first visit to the Gulf emirate.

Several months later, Qatar delivered 30 million litres of fuel in a bid to ease a chronic energy crisis in the territory, which is still subjected to a partial Israeli blockade.

In recent days, Qatari flags have appeared on the streets of Gaza alongside pictures of Haniya with the Qatari emir which were taken when he visited Doha.

Huge hoardings have also been put up, showing posters reading: "Thank you Qatar for keeping your promises. 

Related Articles:

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"Healing the Military Energies in our family Tree" – Jun 13, 2011 (Kryon channelled by David Brown)

“ … There’s much violence and anger throughout the world; when we look at the Middle East, we can see that changes are coming there. The West has a lot of power over the Middle East, but that power will begin to dissolve. The Muslim people of this world will begin to have their own power, and their own prosperity, and they will begin to disconnect from the Western World. This disconnection doesn’t have to be violent as violence only happens when somebody hangs onto what doesn’t belong to them....

... What Military Energy means if we use an analogy: it would be like putting grinding paste into the oil of your motor car. Once you release these energies you will begin to feel lighter as you disconnect from this reality, and, you will find it easier and easier to release any other negative emotions. Military Energies are the core of all your problems...."

North Korean Comedy Romances the World From Pyongyang

Jakarta Globe, Andrew Salmon, October 21, 2012

Filmmakers Anja Daelemans and Nick Bonner with a poster of their movie
Comrade  Kim Goes Flying, made entirely in North Korea, at the 17h Busan
International Film Festival on Oct 10. (AFP Photo)

               

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A romantic comedy may be unusual fare from a country better known for exporting snarling rhetoric.

But for one of the co-producers of the new North Korean movie “Comrade Kim Goes Flying,” such unconventional projects are business as usual.

“There is no great big, bloody mission here,” said Briton Nick Bonner, 50, who has been working with the reclusive state since the early 1990s. “It is about engagement.”

Engagement with North Korea is something Bonner knows well. He has guided more than 12,000 international tourists around the country — including Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler — co-produced award-winning documentaries and even taken a British women’s football team to play in Pyongyang. There are also some Singaporeans among his clients.

“Comrade Kim Goes Flying,” his first feature film, played at the Toronto and Pyongyang film festivals in September. Its South Korean premiere was at the Busan International Film Festival earlier this month.

It follows the odyssey of an attractive coal miner, (played by Han Jong Shim) whose dream is to become a trapeze artist in Pyongyang. Standing in her way is an arrogant acrobat (Pak Chang Guk), who refuses to believe that “Comrade Kim” has the right stuff — until he falls in love with her.

South Koreans, normally prohibited from watching North Korean media, were charmed.

“It was a bit like South Korean soap operas and home dramas with family settings,” said audience member Hwang Yun Mi, a 32-year-old teacher of English and film studies. “It was identifiable; it was not alien to me.”

The feel-good, “girl-power” flick, which cost 1 million euros ($1.3 million) to produce, is a three-way collaboration between North Korea filmmaker Kim Gwang Hun, Oscar-nominated Belgian filmmaker Anja Daelemans, and Bonner, whose Beijing-based company, Koryo Group, has been operating in North Korea since 1993.

“I had helped at the Pyongyang film festival and seen how ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ was received in 2004,” Bonner said. “It is about putting out a universal story with universal values; something that could be written and seen and understood by people outside North Korea.”

It has been a winding path for the Briton, who never specialized in North Korea academically and who, to this day, speaks the language only haltingly. His affair with the country came by chance.

Bonner, who originally planned to be a landscape architect, traveled to Beijing to visit a friend after graduating. While there, he played football with and befriended a North Korean who invited him to visit his country. After the visit, the friend — who comes from a family with good connections — suggested Bonner establish a tour company to bring Westerners in. The rest is history.

Koryo’s 13 employees in Beijing are Westerners and Chinese; in North Korea the firm works with the state-run Korea International Travel Company. While there are bigger Chinese tour companies, Koryo is believed to be the largest company taking non-Chinese into North Korea. It has since expanded into art, sporting and cultural projects, as well as tourism to other off-beat destinations, such as the Russian Far East and Central Asia.

Bonner has also worked on three British-produced North Korean TV documentaries, including “The Game Of Their Lives,” about the North Korean 1966 World Cup Squad which beat Italy in a shock upset, and “Crossing The Line,” about the last living American defector in North Korea.

Bonner said the North Korean officials he deals with are completely trustworthy.

“I have never been cheated by the Korean colleagues we work with,” he said.

His Korean contacts have proven tolerant of Westerners’ foibles, he said, citing the case of an American tourist who insisted on walking around without an escort.

“The guide said, ‘It is a pity he wasted his money, he has already made up his mind about our country,’” Bonner recalled. “The maturity was shown by the guide.”

On the more positive side, Bonner said some of his clients have played cricket and Morris danced (an English folk dance) in North Korea; one client even proposed to his fiancee there. And once, a marching battalion of soldiers, agog at the Western tourists, broke ranks and waved.

When it comes to questions of dictatorship, repression, human rights abuse, starvation and nuclear arms, Bonner declined comment, though he admitted operating in Pyongyang had difficulties.

“If you can make a romantic comedy in North Korea, you can run the six-party talks,” he said.

He was, however, more critical of the way the international community is driving Pyongyang further into isolation.

“A consistent policy of critical engagement would suit us,” he said. “We prove that you can engage with North Korean people.”

And his next adventure? Having taken Middlesbrough’s Women’s Team to North Korea, he is keen to do the same thing in reverse.

“I’d love to take a North Korean women’s football team to Europe.” he said. “Who wouldn’t?”

— Reprinted Courtesy The Straits Times

Related Article:

South Korea invites northern neighbour to film festival

Hong Kong makes largest ivory seizure worth $3.4m

BBC News, 20 October 2012

Related Stories 

• Record Hong Kong rhino horn haul
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• Kenya makes massive ivory seizure

Ivory tusks are used in traditional
medicine in Asia

Hong Kong customs officials say they have confiscated nearly four tonnes of smuggled ivory - their largest seizure of products from endangered species.

The haul - worth about $3.4m (£2.1m) - was hidden in two separate containers from Kenya and Tanzania.

The seizure followed a tip-off from mainland Chinese police, who have since arrested seven people.

A recent rise in the illegal trade in ivory has been fuelled by demand in Asia and the Middle East.

Ivory tusks are used in traditional medicine there and to make ornaments.

'Plastic scrap'

"This is the biggest haul of ivory tusk in Hong Kong customs enforcement history in a single operation," Lam Tak-fai, head of Hong Kong's Ports and Maritime Command, announced on Saturday.

The customs officials said that the ivory tusks - as well as ivory ornaments - had been discovered on Tuesday and Wednesday.

They said that the containers from Kenya and Tanzania had been marked "plastic scrap".

The latest seizure tops the one in 2011 worth $2m.

Under Hong Kong's law, those guilty of trading in endangered species products face up to two years in jail and a huge fine.

The international trade in ivory has been banned since 1989, to protect Africa's dwindling elephant population.

Conservationist have linked China's growing involvement in Africa with a rise in poaching elephant tusks.