North Korea: Not Crazy but Very Misunderstood

BEIJING â€" It seems scary, even crazy: talk of a “sea of fire” and an “arc of destruction,” nuclear missiles slamming into distant shores. North Korea, an “isolated state,” as we’re constantly told by media reports, hurls invective at the world while its people, abused, hungry and cold, are led by an apparently well-fed young man, Kim Jong-un, who sits in front of shabby-looking computers running nuclear programs that are going, literally, ballistic.

But is it all true

“Public discourse about the North in most of our enlightened world is crippled, condescending, irrelevant, and, like heartburn, episodic,” says James Church, the pseudonymous author of a series of novels about the country, in an article titled: “NK and Pluto.” He insists on anonymity because of the nature of his past intelligence work.

As the rhetoric ratchets up again on the Korean peninsula with talk of mobilization, attack and counterattack, Mr. Church’s view is deeply counterintuitive and very valuable. His authorial name is a pseudonym for a former United States intelligence officer who has been in the country dozens of times and now, retired from government, writes about it through the eyes of a fictional North Korean policeman called Inspector O (Full disclosure - I have met Mr. Church and he is definitely real.) In fact, the novels offer a superb demonstration of the idea that fiction tells the truth better than fact.

Here are two snippets of what Mr. Church thinks, based on the article, written some time ago but sent to me this week with a note that said, “Gloomily, it still rings.” Get ready for upending received wisdom:

1. It is we who are isolated from North Korea, not the other way round.

“If North Koreans inhabit the most isolated country on earth (hyperbole widely accepted as fact), then it must also true that we are isolated from them. Isolation, after all, is a two-way street. In this case, however, the proposition is not symmetrical,” Mr. Church writes.

That’s because North Korean experts “tune in outside radio and television, read outside books and newspapers detailing our politics and society,” while, “To learn about them, we pick through chicken entrails,” he writes.

The North Koreans reap tactical benefit from our ignorance.

“We, on the other hand, have developed a fog of myths about them as a substitute for knowledge,” he writes. “These myths, handed down from administration to administration, are comforting in their long familiar ring, but make it difficult for us to avoid walking in circles. The North Koreans move nimbly through this fog, like Drake’s small ships among the galleons of the Spanish armada. Yes, at times they step on their extremities, but don’t we all”

2. Stop obsessing about the nuclear thing.

The North’s strongest card is not nuclear. Its strongest card is its ability to “royally annoy” everyone, Mr. Church says. “Its strength does not come from chemical weapons, arrays of artillery, or brigades of mobile missiles. This small, sad country’s best weapon is not something stashed deep in a granite mountain or smuggled to a rusting port in the hold of a tramp freighter. To find it, no spies need be recruited, no costly, esoteric intelligence collection systems deployed,” he writes.

“The basis of the North’s greatest strength is deceptively simple: “People who are irritated pay attention.” (The italics are in the original essay.)

“Behave badly - always careful to choose the time, always retaining control of the situation â€" and North Korea knows from experience that attention will be paid, even over the grinding of big power teeth,” Mr. Church writes.

What North Korea fears most is being swept away in the tide of big power history, says Mr. Church. So it is parlaying its few, weak cards as best it can. It seeks dialogue with the United States, which it fought in the Korean War, but that dialogue was virtually nixed after former President George Bush declared North Korea part of an “axis of evil” in 2002, as I’ve reported before.

As my colleagues Mark Landler and Choe Sang-hun report, there is a “disconnect” in North Korea today. Despite the rhetoric of threat, “We are not seeing changes to the North Korean military posture such as large-scale mobilizations or positioning of forces,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. “What that disconnect between rhetoric and action means, I’ll leave to the analysts to judge.” People like Mr. Church.

There are signs of growing calls for a different approach to North Korea. A recent article on CNN was titled, “Kim Jong-un is not crazy“.

And Mike Chinoy, a respected commentator and author of a book on North Korea, wrote in the Washington Post recently: “the truth has to be faced: U.S. policy toward North Korea is not working.”

What might work Face-to-face discussions, Mr. Chinoy wrote, to “enable the United States to judge whether there is any hope of dialogue and revived diplomacy.” President Obama should try that and “send a high-level envoy to Pyongyang.”

I have the feeling that Mr. Church’s fictional hero, Inspector O, the North Korean detective, would approve.

Canada’s Latest Climate Change

Just days after World Water Day, the Canadian government quietly acknowledged last week that it had dropped out of the United Nations anti-drought convention. The move reportedly makes Canada the only nation in the world not party to United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, or Unccd.

The transcript of the exchange can be read here.

Despite the ruling Conservative government’s claim that it had opted out because too little of its contribution was going toward actual anti-drought programming â€" branding the U.N. convention a “talkfest” in the process â€" many critics were quick to say the move fits a patten of a conservative party that has opposed environmental regulation.

“It’s just another step Canada moves away from protecting the environment and towards the oil industry,” said John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada.

The pullout became public during the official question period in Parliament on Thursday, just before the long Easter weekend break.

“The Conservatives are doing tremendous damage to our international reputation,” said Paul Dewar, an M.P. from the New Democratic Party, the official opposition, during the question period.

The reaction to the news in Canada, where many fear the government of Prime Minster Stephen J. Harper is undoing Canada’s reputation for both environmentalism and international cooperation, was as swift as it was damming.

Elizabeth May, leader of Canada’s federal Green Party, compared Canada to North Korea when it comes to environmental law:

“Canada pulling out of the UN Convention on drought is part of a worrisome trend,” wrote Josh Laughren, director of the Climate and Energy Program at WWF-Canada in an email.

But the withdrawal from the Kyoto agreement, muzzling of federal scientists, the funding cuts to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy and a focus on oil and gas exploration are more hotly debated among environmentalists.

“Under the government of Prime Minister Harper there has been a steady erosion of Canada’s contribution to solving global environmental issues like climate change, coupled with sweeping changes that have weakened domestic environmental legislation,” wrote Mr. Laughren.

As we reported on Rendezvous last year, Canada was awarded the Fossil of the Year award by climate activists at the Doha summit meeting.

Canada’s current government is seen as industry-friendly and a strong advocate of oil exploration. While it says it recognizes environmental problems, it has taken the position that industry will find ways to innovate to become greener and that government regulations and new international agreements will replace existing treaties.

Prime Minster Harpercalled the Kyoto Protocol a thing of the past and suggested that as long as China and the United States â€" the word’s biggest polluters â€" were not limited by the treaty, Canada’s competitiveness would be hurt by being a part of that framework.

While some Canadians see environmental carelessness in the decision to opt out of the global anti-drought convention, others suspect the government has more sinister motives. The Unccd itself says that 60 percent of Canadian crops are grown in dry areas.

And Maude Barlow, the national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, a social justice organization, asked in a statement, “Is Harper pulling out of this treaty in the hope that doing so removes a key international legal instrument at a time when First Nations are increasingly challenging the legal legitimacy of his government’s legislation, especially in relation to tar sands, mining, and omnibus legislation”

Canada had supported the Unccd since 1995, and was once seen as one of its strong supporters. Canada’s yearly contribution of roughly 290,000 Canadian dollars (roughly the same in U.S. currency) represents a little more than three percent of the convention’s annual budget.

A statement on the Unccd Web site read, “The Convention is stronger than ever before, which makes Canada’s decision to withdraw from the Convention all the more regrettable.”

Back in China, Bus Driver Doesn’t Regret Singapore Strike

BEIJING â€" He Junling, the last of five Chinese bus drivers jailed and deported from Singapore for striking over pay and living conditions last year, arrived back in China on Sunday saying: “I have no regrets.”

The brief walkout in late November by scores of Chinese bus drivers shocked the tightly run Asian city-state, where strikes are rare (the last significant industrial action was more than 25 years ago, Reuters reported), but where advocates for workers’ rights say that migrant workers, who number in the hundreds of thousands, are often poorly treated.

“I don’t regret what happened. We heard that after we were arrested they improved conditions,” Mr. He, 33, said by telephone from his home in Jiaozuo, in Henan Province, where he had returned to his wife and 5-year-old daughter after serving a seven-week jail sentence in Singapore. (Four other drivers spent six weeks in jail; 29 were deported immediately after the strike; and about 150 others were given warnings, according to reports like this one in The Straits Times, a Singaporean newspaper.)

In December, Singapore’s minister of state for health and manpower, Amy Khor, said the strike was “a wake-up call” for companies to be more vigilant and put in place good management practices, Reuters reported.

The case highlighted an irony, said labor rights advocates: if such strikes are rare in Singapore, in China they are by now widespread, despite the Asian giant’s repressive image.

“It’s exactly what they would do in China if they had a contract dispute, if their employers refused to listen to them, if they were being paid less than other people,” said Geoff Crothall of the Hong Kong-based China Labor Bulletin, a labor rights group.

“What’s changed now in China is workers are more willing to go out and stage protests. In the past strike action was virtually unheard of,” said Mr. Crothall. “Now it’s a very common, almost widespread, default action for dispute resolution,” he said.

Singaporean law bars workers in essential services like public transportation from going on strike without giving 14 days’ notice, according to Reuters.

In a statement, Workfair, a Singapore-based nongovernmental labor rights organization that followed the strike closely, criticized the jail terms.

“A custodial sentence for taking part in a strike is severely disproportionate to the ‘offence’ that was committed, in light of the fact that the workers did not have union representation, had to endure poor living conditions and were discriminated against in basic wages and incentive payments,” the statement said.

“Much of the emphasis so far has been placed on punishing the ‘perpetrators’ of the ‘illegal strike,’ without sufficient analysis and reflection on the state of industrial relations in Singapore and the lack of protection for low waged workers,” the statement read.

Speaking on the telephone, Jolovan Wham of Workfair said the implications of the strike were “huge.”

“Its implications are very significant for Singapore because it’s a first time a strike has happened on this scale and was known to the public,” he said.

“The strike has brought to light some of the very big problems of the exploitation of migrant workers for a very long time,” said Mr. Wham.

In December, Human Rights Watch called for the charges against the drivers to be dropped and accused Singapore of “justifying nationality-based discrimination in pay and working conditions, and restricting foreign workers’ rights to form or lead a union to do something about it.”

Speaking of his time in jail, Mr. He said his treatment was “strict,” but “safe.”

“I don’t think Singapore is a bad place,” he said. “They do many things well. But compared to China, their human touch is very poor,” he said. “I’m very happy to be back home.”

The strike against the transportation company SMRT was motivated by low pay for Chinese drivers compared to Singaporeans and Malaysians, said Mr. He. He also said living conditions in dormitories were poor.

“We were living 10 to a room, people doing early shifts, late shifts, getting up a 3 a.m., or back at 1 a.m., everyone was waking everyone else up all the time. We didn’t sleep properly,” he said.

“Also, Singapore is hot,” he said, and when they washed it created commotion, waking roommates. There was no air conditioning in the rooms, he said, just two fans. “There was a garbage place outside and that attracted lots of rats and cockroaches,” he said.

In a Straits Times story in December, Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin said that the Manpower Ministry conducted regular checks on dormitories to ensure that they were up to par and there was no overcrowding.

Mr. Tan said, “But we do want to promote better employment practices, we want to make sure that good H.R. practices are in place.”

Contacted by telephone, Humphrey Sew of SMRT referred me to statements issued in late November that were available on the company Web site. One, dated Nov. 30, said that SMRT’s chief executive Desmond Kuek had visited the dormitories and noted that conditions could certainly be better.”

The statement also said that “feedback had been given to the dormitory operators to step up the living conditions” for drivers. It quoted Mr. Kuek as saying there were “open channels of communications” with all drivers, but added that a new 24-hour hotline and an email help desk would be set up, the statement said.

Mr. He said in our interview, “We wanted to talk to the management but they didn’t listen. No one paid any attention to us.” In some ways, things were better in China, he said.

“In China, if I have a problem, I can at least go to the government and petition them,” he said. “I can tell everyone about it and go to a government department and complain. But in Singapore, our complaints didn’t reach the government,” he said.

A request for comment by the Ministry of Manpower was pending at the time of writing, and when we hear back we’ll update this post.

IHT Quick Read: April 1

NEWS North Korea’s leader on Sunday announced a “new strategic line” that defied warnings from Washington, saying that his country was determined to rebuild its economy in the face of international sanctions while simultaneously expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal, which the ruling party called “the nation’s life.” Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

As President Obama negotiates a spending and revenue deal, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is warning there will be “significant changes” at the Pentagon. Thom Shanker reports from Washington.

In his first Easter Sunday message, Pope Francis passionately called for “peace in all the world,” urging Israelis and Palestinians to “resume negotiations to end a conflict that has lasted all too long,” calling for an end to the civil war in Syria, and promoting a “renewed spirit of reconciliation” on the Korean Peninsula. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Vatican City.

Clashes that erupted Saturday night in Kenya after the Supreme Court ruled that Uhuru Kenyatta was legitimately elected president were nowhere near as chaotic as the 2007 disputed election. Jeffrey Gettleman reports from Nairobi.

Lowrider culture, with roots in East Los Angeles, is spreading in parts of Asia and Europe, and is raising eyebrows in South America’s largest city. Simon Romero reports from São Paulo.

Sudan’s archaeological record is pivotal to understanding the history of Africa itself, experts say, and a wave of new discoveries may be adding crucial new information. Ismaïl Kushkush reports from Khartoum.

Bloodied by a harsh bailout deal that drives a stake through the heart of this Mediterranean country’s oversize financial industry, Cyprus now faces a further blow to its role as an offshore tax haven: the vultures from competing territories are circling. Andrew Higgins reports from Limassol, Cyprus.

In an effort to cool the resurgent property market, two of China’s biggest cities announced over the weekend that they would put in place a series of new restrictions and penalties on housing sales. David Barboza reports from Shanghai.

Israel moved closer to its goal of energy independence on Sunday as natural gas from a large offshore field began flowing into the country, a harbinger of important change that will benefit the country strategically and economically, officials said. Isabel Kershner reports from Jerusalem.

ARTS “A Handbook of California Design,” a new book edited by Bobbye Tigerman, is an incisive history of a design scene from the Depression to 1965. Alice Rawsthorn reviews from London.

SPORTS In soccer, this was an extraordinary weekend for goal scorers: Lionel Messi set a record, Claudio Pizarro hit four goals for Bayern Munich and Blerim Dzemaili scored three times for Napoli. Rob Hughes reports from London.

IHT Quick Read: April 1

NEWS North Korea’s leader on Sunday announced a “new strategic line” that defied warnings from Washington, saying that his country was determined to rebuild its economy in the face of international sanctions while simultaneously expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal, which the ruling party called “the nation’s life.” Choe Sang-Hun reports from Seoul.

As President Obama negotiates a spending and revenue deal, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is warning there will be “significant changes” at the Pentagon. Thom Shanker reports from Washington.

In his first Easter Sunday message, Pope Francis passionately called for “peace in all the world,” urging Israelis and Palestinians to “resume negotiations to end a conflict that has lasted all too long,” calling for an end to the civil war in Syria, and promoting a “renewed spirit of reconciliation” on the Korean Peninsula. Elisabetta Povoledo reports from Vatican City.

Clashes that erupted Saturday night in Kenya after the Supreme Court ruled that Uhuru Kenyatta was legitimately elected president were nowhere near as chaotic as the 2007 disputed election. Jeffrey Gettleman reports from Nairobi.

Lowrider culture, with roots in East Los Angeles, is spreading in parts of Asia and Europe, and is raising eyebrows in South America’s largest city. Simon Romero reports from São Paulo.

Sudan’s archaeological record is pivotal to understanding the history of Africa itself, experts say, and a wave of new discoveries may be adding crucial new information. Ismaïl Kushkush reports from Khartoum.

Bloodied by a harsh bailout deal that drives a stake through the heart of this Mediterranean country’s oversize financial industry, Cyprus now faces a further blow to its role as an offshore tax haven: the vultures from competing territories are circling. Andrew Higgins reports from Limassol, Cyprus.

In an effort to cool the resurgent property market, two of China’s biggest cities announced over the weekend that they would put in place a series of new restrictions and penalties on housing sales. David Barboza reports from Shanghai.

Israel moved closer to its goal of energy independence on Sunday as natural gas from a large offshore field began flowing into the country, a harbinger of important change that will benefit the country strategically and economically, officials said. Isabel Kershner reports from Jerusalem.

ARTS “A Handbook of California Design,” a new book edited by Bobbye Tigerman, is an incisive history of a design scene from the Depression to 1965. Alice Rawsthorn reviews from London.

SPORTS In soccer, this was an extraordinary weekend for goal scorers: Lionel Messi set a record, Claudio Pizarro hit four goals for Bayern Munich and Blerim Dzemaili scored three times for Napoli. Rob Hughes reports from London.