THE KOREAS: Islanders Aim For Normalcy In North Korea's Shadow

South Korean marines return to a beach on Baengnyeong Island following a search operation to find 46 missing sailors after a mysterious explosion ripped the sailors' ship in half March 26.  Doualy Xaykaothao for NPR

April 1, 2010

The South Korean military has suspended a rescue operation to find 46 missing sailors because of bad weather in the Yellow Sea. The missing crew members are thought to be trapped in a small navy ship that went down March 26 after a mysterious explosion split the vessel in half.

The base of rescue operations is Baengnyeong Island, which is about the size of Bermuda and is less than 10 miles from North Korea's west coast. On a recent afternoon, as South Korean recovery divers gathered around rubber boats on the beach, a bitterly cold wind blew.

Situated between the declared enemies, the island's residents try to live their lives as normally as possible — but are among the first to suffer when tensions rise.

On the island's main wharf, a deceptive tranquility prevails. Half of the 10,000 people on Baengnyeong are soldiers, and even the civilians — male and female — are trained to handle guns, just in case the North Koreans should attack. Fishermen must return to port by nightfall lest they be mistaken for the enemy.

But 22-year-old Kim Dong-joon plays down the danger.

"When the weather is good, you can see North Korea's Hwanghae province from Baengnyeong Island, but that doesn't mean that we think about North Korea all the time," he says. "We live normally like people everywhere else. It's not like we're afraid of North Korea or anything."

But these islanders are the first to suffer economic consequences whenever tensions rise between the two Koreas. Naval clashes in the Yellow Sea have disrupted fishing and discouraged tourists from making the four-hour boat ride from the mainland.

Locals take turns bringing coffee and tea to soldiers involved in the sailor rescue efforts. As U Pil-yeo hands a cup to an officer, her thoughts turn to the missing South Korean sailors.

"It's heartrending. These young men were working hard to defend our island, only to meet with an unfortunate event like this," she says. "When you think of the parents, it really hits home, and because this happened at sea and not on land, they can't even see anything."

On a windy observation deck, on a cliff overlooking the sea, local bed-and-breakfast owner Park Ji-young says some tourists think the islanders don't have any feelings.

"It's not that we don't have feelings, but there's nothing that we can do about it. If the military can't do anything, what can we do?" she says. "All we can do is to live our lives the best we can."

N. KOREA: N. Korean Refugees View Regime With Skepticism

April 1, 2010

A new survey of North Korean refugees living in South Korea and China suggests an increasing number of North Koreans view Kim Jong Il's regime with skepticism. Marcus Noland, deputy director of the Peterson Institute, one of the authors of the study, offers his insight.

TRANSCRIPT:

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

From NPR News, I'm Robert Siegel.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

I'm Michele Norris, and this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

SIEGEL: North Korea is notoriously opaque: a dynastic, communist dictatorship where dissent is not tolerated, and the media are state-controlled. So assessing public opinion among North Koreans sounds like, at best, a crude business.

A new study attempts to do that by sampling opinion among North Korean refugees, and the authors conclude that opposition to the North Korean regime, cynicism about it and listening to foreign news sources about it are all on the rise.

Marcus Noland is one of the authors. He's deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.

Mr. MARCUS NOLAND (Deputy Director, Peterson Institute for International Economics): My pleasure.

SIEGEL: And first, the obvious question of method here is: Do a few hundred North Koreans who have left and now live in South Korea, are they representative of the millions of North Koreans who still live there?

Mr. NOLAND: What we can do is we can take the pattern of responses and analyze it statistically. We can try to identify demographic characteristics like gender, or life experiences like receiving food aid, that may affect people's responses. And then having done that statistical analysis, we can make a counterfactual projection onto the remaining local population.

It appears that the refugees' views are not that different from what we project onto the resident population, but having voted with their feet, this could be a community that simply has characteristics or views that we cannot observe that would make them distinct. That is certainly the case.

SIEGEL: So if you can construct a model of what public opinion is in North Korea, what they think of the regime, how are those views changing now over time?

Mr. NOLAND: The projections are that public opinion about the regime is pretty low and falling.

SIEGEL: To the extent of taking part in any kind of dissident political behavior or expressing such views publicly? How would you measure that?

Mr. NOLAND: What we can observe is that people increasingly do not accept the regime's narrative, the explanation that all of their ills are due to hostile foreign forces. People increasingly regard the regime as the reason for their situation.

Moreover, the disastrous currency reform that the country undertook on 30th November of last year is a fiasco that is so obviously incompatible with this explanation that everything that is wrong is due to hostile foreigners since it's so obviously self-inflicted. And I think that simply will add an exclamation point to this trend of increasing disbelief about the regime's explanations.

SIEGEL: You asked people about the use of foreign media, and it does appear that the so-called hermit kingdom is not so hermetically sealed as it once was.

Mr. NOLAND: I wouldn't want to exaggerate sources of information that they have at their disposal, but the numbers that report that they had access but had declined to listen has basically disappeared completely.

So people who have access are now listening, and that's an increasing share of the population.

SIEGEL: There's a question you ask that I find interesting. It's whether people in North Korea make jokes about Kim Jong Il, the leader, or his regime, for that matter.

Mr. NOLAND: Well, we ask a series of questions that could be thought of as political anthropology. First, you know, among your peers, when you were in North Korea, did you joke about conditions? Did you complain about conditions? Did you joke about Kim Jong Il? Did you complain about Kim Jong Il?

And what emerges from this is that even amongst this population, which one would expect them to be about as dissenting a group as one could identify, is the degree of atomization. Although the numbers of affirmative responses to those questions are rising, they still remain relatively low, and Kim Jong Il himself remains absolutely sacrosanct. Nobody jokes about Kim Jong Il.

SIEGEL: Marcus Noland, co-author of the study, "Political Attitudes Under Repression: Evidence from North Korean Refugees." The study was conducted for the East-West Center. Thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. NOLAND: My pleasure.

Read the full East-West Center report

SHANGHAI, CHINA: Shanghai's Expo Is Chance For World To Court China

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE STORY ON NPR

April 2, 2010

NPR

The World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904 gave the world X-rays and ice cream cones. In 1939, the New York World's fair unveiled television broadcasts, the tape recorder and nylon stockings.

On May 1, the modern-day equivalent, the World Expo, will open in Shanghai, China. Given China's rising international profile, the Shanghai Expo seems to be less about inventions and more about geopolitics.

Countries are thinking up ever more inventive ways to tout the national brand to the expo's expected 70 million visitors, most of whom will be Chinese.

As the official World Expo song is unveiled to mark the one-month countdown, frenzied preparations are under way. Denmark is bringing its Little Mermaid statue; a real chairlift tops the Swiss exhibit, and Belgium is even giving away free diamonds to a chosen few.

It's a sign of China's political importance that the millions being spent are seen as a small price to pay.

The World's Most Expensive Vanity Project?

Shanghai is in a multibillion-dollar frenzy of self-transformation as the clock ticks down to opening day. Roads are being widened, boulevards built and temporary pavilions erected at warp speed on a huge tract of riverside land set aside for the expo.

The half-year-long exposition will end up costing more than the Beijing Olympics. Critics say it is a chance for countries to cozy up to China and kowtow visibly by building costly national pavilions, which will be torn down in six months' time after the expo is over.

But those responsible for the pavilions disagree about their political role.

Peter Sams, director of the Australian pavilion, says that ties with China are important to Australia. "We [very much see] the expo and a substantial presence — us helping China have a successful expo — as a very important part of our bilateral relationship," he says.

The country's pavilion is one of the most expensive per capita, at $76 million. Its rust-red steel exterior hints at the massive business of exporting natural resources from Canberra to Beijing. This trade indirectly led to one of the lowest points in the bilateral relationship, the sentencing earlier this week of Australian citizen Stern Hu to 10 years in prison for bribery and stealing commercial secrets about China's steel needs.

Earlier this year, Chinese President Hu Jintao toured Australia's pavilion, which is almost finished. Expo officials admit that about 10 percent of the 91 national pavilions are not expected to be ready in time for the opening, but the Australian staffers were cocky with delight as they showed off Aboriginal art in the form of painted poles and the auditorium where a nine-minute show will be performed.

Not A Political Event?

Others disagree about the expo's political function, including Rajesh Kumar, director of the India pavilion's organizing team. Dressed in a bejeweled Indian shirt, he beams with pride as he gestures at the gigantic bamboo dome housing India's offerings.

India is spending a total of $50 million, he says, but its motivation isn't political.

"This is the World Expo, not a political forum," Kumar says. "This is not at all to do with any kind of politics or any kind of diplomacy. Nothing."

That, however, may be disingenuous, given that India is actually bringing 2,000 artists to tour 40 cities across China. That includes 50 Bollywood stars, who will strut their stuff in a one-time special show in Shanghai. Funded by the Ministry of Commerce, this Festival of India certainly sounds like an act of dance diplomacy.

U.S.: 'Rising To The Challenge'

When it comes to the U.S., Consul General Beatrice Camp says the expo is "a bright spot" in bilateral relations.

But the $61 million pavilion very nearly didn't get built after funding difficulties. It is still under construction, and on a visit to the expo site, journalists weren't taken to the building.

It's the only privately funded national pavilion, and with just a month to go, it's still short of millions of dollars. Jose Villarreal, the U.S. commissioner general to the Shanghai Expo, has pledged that it will be ready for opening day.

Fittingly, the U.S. pavilion's theme is "Rising to the Challenge." Private sponsors may be footing the bill, but Mark Germyn, chief operating officer of the pavilion, says it won't simply be a corporate advertisement.

"We are not a trade show format by any means. Our sponsor partners are ... participating because they believe ... that this is a very worthwhile opportunity to support America and America's presence in expressing, in a very positive way, American culture and society to Chinese here," Germyn says.

Japan: Mending Ties

For its part, Japan is spending big time: $140 million, almost as much as the biggest spender of all, Saudi Arabia, which is shelling out $146 million. For that price tag, Japan has built a lilac cocoon from high-tech breathable material, populated by violin-playing robots.

Noriyoshi Ehara, Japan's pavilion director, is so protective of it that he asked foreign journalists to remove their shoes before entry. Relations between Tokyo and Beijing have been haunted by Japan's wartime atrocities. But Ehara is confident that the pavilion will remake ties anew.

"We have historical issues, but now we are going to create new relations. This is it," he says, gesturing around the pavilion. "Japan's pavilion expresses the new relation with China. This is the main motif."

Click here for A Sneak Peek Of The Shanghai World Expo Exhibits

N. KOREA & CHINA: Facing food shortages and sanctions, Kim Jong Il appears to reach out to China

Thursday, April 1, 2010; 11:22 AM

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service

SEOUL -- Squeezed by food shortages and financial sanctions, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il appears to be reaching out to China and Chinese investors.

Kim may soon travel to China, according to the office of South Korea's president and U.S. officials. They cited preparations that appear to be underway in the Chinese border city of Dandong and in Beijing. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Thursday it does not have information on whether Kim will visit China.

The potential trip could help restart six-party talks, hosted by China, aimed at persuading North Korea to denuclearize in return for economic and political benefits.

Kim is also attempting to accelerate Chinese investment in his destitute country. To that end, he has ordered the creation of a State Development Bank.

Officials from the new bank told a South Korean professor last week that they intend to allow the construction of foreign-owned factories in major North Korean cities. This would allow Chinese firms, many of which are running short of low-cost factory workers, access to North Korea's pool of low-wage laborers.

If the investments move forward, they would mark an extraordinary opening in the North's shuttered economy -- and represent a major policy reversal by the government. For the past six decades, North Korea has sealed almost all its citizens off from the "poisons" of capitalism.

Outreach to China comes at a time of sharply increased pressure on Kim's leadership.

On the inside, food shortages have worsened because of botched currency reform that disrupted the private markets that feed most of the country's 22.5 million people. In addition, Kim's medical ills now include kidney failure, and he undergoes dialysis every two weeks, according to the head of a state-run think tank in Seoul.

On the outside, U.N. sanctions are reportedly limiting the North's ability to profit from weapons sales. State trafficking in counterfeit cigarettes and illicit drugs appears to be dwindling. In addition, large-scale food aid from South Korea has stopped until Pyongyang agrees to junk its nuclear weapons.

What North Korea desperately needs is foreign capital.

"Through this State Development Bank, North Korea is trying to lure foreign investment in agriculture, ports, railroads and also light industry," said Lim Eul-chul, a research professor at the Seoul-based Institute for Far Eastern Studies. He spent four days in Pyongyang last week, talking to officials from the bank and to Chinese businessmen.

They told Lim that the bank is offering itself to foreign investors as a one-stop investment shop. A deputy director of the board of the new state bank is Pak Chol Su, an ethnic Korean who lives in China.

The bank, whose board includes senior members of the military and the ruling party, will be able to conduct transactions with foreign commercial banks and invest in major projects, North Korean state-controlled media has said. The bank has been allocated $10 billion from Kim's government as pump-priming capital, Chinese news media said.

"The North is now planning to open foreign-owned factories not just in closed-off special economic zones, but in major cities like Nampo and Wonsan," Lim said.

Until now, the government has confined nearly all foreign business operations to sealed-off economic zones, such as Kaesong near the South Korea border.

"This is a major new departure for North Korea," said Lim, who has been a regular visitor to Pyongyang for the past two decades. "The military is closely cooperating with the State Development Bank to try to increase foreign investment."

While the repressive power of the army and multiple security forces remains strong, the North's command-style economy is a ruin, with unconfirmed reports of starvation deaths in some areas this winter.

Private markets, run by entrepreneurs who do not depend on the state, account for most of the country's economic activity. But a state-ordered currency reform late last year roiled the markets for months, worsened food shortages from a bad fall harvest and lead to isolated riots. The government has apologized for the currency fiasco -- and, reportedly, executed the finance official responsible for it.

Kim, 68, and showing the effects of a 2008 stroke, is in the early stages of handing power over to his untested 27-year-old son, Kim Jong Eun. But the legitimacy of the succession -- and of the state itself -- is being weakened by the growth of the markets and increased public access to foreign media. Refugee surveys show that many North Koreans blame Kim's government for food shortages, corruption and incompetence.

"Kim Jong Il doesn't have many cards to play, so there is more and more pressure on him to return to the six-party talks," said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. "He is also aiming to get investment from ethnic Korean businesses in China."

In South Korea and China, there is widespread skepticism about North Korea's willingness to create modern banking systems and enforce laws that allow foreign companies to operate under standardized accounting rules.

Companies that have invested in North Korean mineral ventures have complained for years of corruption and outright theft by the government.

Special correspondent June Lee contributed to this report.

View Washington Post Article...

HONG KONG: Buffalo Mozzarella: Hong Kong's Prodigal Cheese

Made with passion Oschetti's sea-bass involtini/SHEILA ZHAO

Few Italians would admit that they had anyone to thank but il bel paese (or "the beautiful country," as it's poetically called) for the cream-filled cheese known as burrata. But the Ferrari, one could say, of buffalo mozzarella owes its smooth intensity to the rich milk of the water buffalo, first taken to Italy from Asia in the Middle Ages by those marauding Crusaders.

Today, Hong Kong fromage-ophiles will be pleased to know that burrata is having a homecoming. At Posto Publico, postopubblico.com, one of the latest and best additions to the city's dining scene, the ambrosial white pouches are served alongside fresh tomatoes as one of several tapas-style Italian dishes. "Amazing Burrata" also graces the chalkboard menus of Wanchai's Classified Mozzarella Bar, classifiedfoodshops.com.hk, a 10-minute drive away.

The prodigal cheese owes its sudden ubiquity to Hong Kong's new crop of boutique Italian eateries. The city has long had an affinity for classic Italian fare: spaghetti and macaroni are standbys in street stalls and Cantonese diners, and many of the city's loftiest fine-dining establishments are headed by Italian chefs. But this generation has a different flavor — it's focused on artisanal foods, emphasizing ingredients first, flash second.

Cuore, cuoreprivatechef.com, started by Milanese chef Andrea Oschetti in September 2009, stages exquisite dinners in Oschetti's own apartment in central Hong Kong. Mixing up entrees like sea bass crusted in olives on eggplant fry, and black-sesame panna cotta with blackberry coulis, Oschetti's gatherings are select and sweet, lubricated with carefully chosen wine from family-run Italian vineyards. He argues that Hong Kong is full of big, high-concept restaurants that often cut back on food costs to afford exorbitant rents, and that has created the demand for the new, authentic breed of Italian venues. These days, he says, diners are "looking for a real experience, driven by passion." Spoken like a true crusader.

View Time Travel Article