South Korea rebrands 'scariest place on Earth'

Posted on 7th May 2012 in The monuments of world

6 May 2012 Last updated at 22:47 ET

By Lucy Williamson BBC News, Seoul

The Demilitarised Zone in South KoreaThe Demilitarised Zone in South Korea draws about 6.5 million visitors each year

As tourist sites go, the frontier between North and South Korea offers more than the usual souvenir T-shirt – though it sells those, too.

A living piece of the Cold War, the so-called Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is guarded by a million soldiers and another million landmines ranged along the 248km (154.1 mile) strip.

This is the place former US President Bill Clinton called “the scariest place on Earth” – and the place South Korea has now decided to create its new eco-tourism zone.

Not that the DMZ has trouble attracting tourists.

About 6.5 million visitors come every year to peer through binoculars into secretive North Korea. They step into the infiltration tunnels and have their photographs taken in front of the war-time monuments and relics.

“I think the people who come here [are] those who have a heart for the North Korean people, because it’s as close as they can get,” said Steven Felker, a minister with Christ Chapel in New York.

“Other people [come here because] this is the closest you can get safely to an active militarised zone, and they’re just curious about the adrenaline rush.”

Image overhaul

But South Korea’s government is not happy with the image of the DMZ as a place of war and tension. It is hoping to rebrand the area around it as the “PLZ”, or the “Peace and Life Zone”.

“Up to now,” said Park Meeja, director of Nature Policy at the Environment Ministry, “the DMZ [area] has been a place of restriction and high security.”

“But by turning this into an eco-tourism zone, I think it will change how people see it. Rather than come to see the world’s last divided country, in future we hope that more people will come here to experience the wildlife.”

It is not as implausible as it sounds. The armistice agreement at the end of the Korean War 60 years ago created a buffer zone – 2km on either side of the ceasefire line – from which military equipment and personnel were banned.

Graves of North Korean and Chinese soldiersThe white sticks mark graves of North Korean and Chinese soldiers killed in the Korean War

Beyond that is a further 8km strip to which public access has been tightly restricted.

Environmentalists say that has created a pristine nature reserve, with thousands of species including rare cranes and Korean flying squirrels.

The Environment Ministry plan will create trails through the area to allow tourists access.

Uneasy truce

But even conflicts from 60 years ago are not always easy to forget. Hidden in farmland, off a motorway near the frontier, is a site the tour buses do not stop at.

Hundreds of white sticks, planted in neat rows, glint beside small mounds of earth – the graves of North Korean and Chinese soldiers killed during the Korean War.

The most recent interment took place here just last year. Remains like these are being unearthed by the South Korean army all the time.

And there are other reminders too, of course, that the war those soldiers fought has never formally ended. North and South Korea are bound by an uneasy truce, not a peace deal.

North Korea has sent shells and spies to the South on several occasions since then.

And both sides carry out regular, large-scale military exercises.

Revising the reminders of conflict here is one thing, but the military tensions themselves are stubbornly hard to erase.

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North Korea: Kim Jong Un Channels Grandfather in Speech

Posted on 16th April 2012 in The monuments of world

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves to the crowd during a military parade celebrating the centenary of Kim Il Sung’s birth in Pyongyang on April 15, 2012

KCNA / Reuters

On April 15, the 100th anniversary of the his grandfather’s birth, beefy 29-year-old Kim Jong Un stepped up to the microphone, and for the first time, the citizenry of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as well as a world of curious onlookers, could actually hear what the young man sounded like. The spitting image of his forefather’s propaganda portraits, Lil’ Kim — as he has been called by the foreign press — spoke clearly and with confidence for 20 minutes with the military’s general staff at his side and thousands of troops at attention in front of him in central Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square, named after the founding dynast and Great Leader.

It took some spine to rise to what was, in the North Korean context, a significant, even august occasion — more so for a young man who has been the top leader of North Korea for just a few months, following the death of his father Kim Jong Il in December. Sunday was an occasion the nation’s leadership had been focused on for a long, long time; the centenary of Kim Il Sung’s birth was to be the day that North Korea could proudly say it was a “strong and prosperous nation” — a phrase repeated endlessly (and mindlessly) in North Korean propaganda as far back as I can remember. The nation’s university students have not been attending classes this year; they have been instead at construction sites, building statues and other monuments of glorification to the Great Leader and the founding of his Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. And so the young man who has thus far projected the image of someone with a common touch (he seems to laugh and joke easily both with ordinary soldiers close to him in age and with generals old enough to be his grandfather) managed to pull off his grandest public appearance yet without much of a hitch.

(PHOTOS: North Korea Missile Launch Fails)

Yet because he is so young, and because he spent time as a teenager going to high school in Switzerland, one of the richest countries in the West, it’s impossible to watch Kim Jong Un on an occasion like yesterday’s and not wonder whether the young man might have a sense of reality — or irony, even — that’s missing among his elders, the men who are the power behind his throne. Just two days before the speech and spectacle, North Korea had allowed 50 foreign correspondents to go and witness the launch of what Pyongyang called a satellite, but what the rest of the world considered a long-range missile. The exercise, presumably, was to demonstrate that the North is indeed a “strong” nation. As it happened, the missile went up from the launch site near the Chinese border, flew for less than two minutes, then plopped pathetically into the Yellow Sea — an abject failure. With the world watching, even the newscaster in Pyongyang conceded as much.

As for the notion that North Korea is becoming a “prosperous” nation, consider that in response to the launch — which violated U.N. resolutions designed to deter Pyongyang from pursuing its ballistic-missile program — the Obama Administration canceled a food-aid program with Pyongyang, which it had agreed to in late February, shortly after Kim Jong Il’s death. (Pyongyang had agreed in return to a “moratorium” on both its nuclear program and its ballistic-missile effort.) North Korea, according to military analysts, spent at minimum tens of millions of dollars on the failed missile launch, yet requires food aid in order to be able to feed its population.

On the day of the glorious anniversary, in other words, it couldn’t be more obvious that North Korea is neither strong nor prosperous. Surely, at some level, young Kim Jong Un must understand this.

(MORE: Kim Comes Clean on Rocket Failure, but Can North Korea Handle the Truth?)

Yet during his speech on Sunday, young Kim Jong Un said he was committed to carrying out the policies of his father, known as “military-first politics.” Dating back to the mid-1990s, the policy, simply put, means (as Kim Jong Il put it) “placing top priority of military affairs.” For a dictatorship confronted with a famine that was then killing millions, putting the military first made eminent sense for the ruling family. As Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, wrote, the Kim dynasty was then “faced with problems in guaranteeing its political security based on its citizens’ ‘voluntary’ support, and its dependence on coercive force increased as … the domestic economic situation turned more unfavorable.” (Translation: take care of the guys with the guns, lest they take care of you.)

The vast majority of North Korea watchers at the time of Kim Jong Il’s death believed that Kim Jong Un would carry on with his father’s policy, because practically speaking, he has little choice. For all the mythology about the inherent authority of the Kim dynasty in North Korea, the generals are Kim Jong Un’s key backers. He’s not likely to do anything to anger them — not for a long, long time, anyway. To the contrary, as the speech yesterday indicates, he’s likely to want to appease them.

And they are no doubt very angry right now, in the wake of the humiliating failure of the missile launch. They are likely to want to show the world that North Korea’s military is actually not a joke. How best to do that? As Ralph Cossa, head of the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says: “The failure makes it even more likely that the North will now attempt a nuclear test in the not-too-distant future.”

That, unfortunately, is probably right. Kim Jong Il wasn’t much for public speeches, broadcast nationally (according to some analysts, he did it just once), and maybe Kim Jong Un has more of a populist touch, evocative of his grandfather. But when it comes to how the North Korean regime behaves, the bad news is that the new Kim seems like a chip off the old block.

MORE: North Korea’s Rocket Fails, but More Fireworks Could Follow

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Like Grandfather, Like Grandson: Kim Jong Un Plays to North Korea's Generals

Posted on 16th April 2012 in The monuments of world

On April 15, the 100th anniversary of the his grandfather’s birth, beefy 29-year old Kim Jong Un stepped up to the microphone and for the first time, the citizenry of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as well as a world of curious onlookers, could actually hear what the young man sounded like. — The spitting image of his forefather’s propaganda portraits, “Lil’ Kim” — as he has been called by the foreign press — spoke clearly and with confidence for 20 minutes with the military’s general staff at his side and thousands of troops at attention in front of him in central Pyongyang‘s Kim Il Sung square, named after the founding dynast and “Great Leader.”

It took some spine to rise to what was, in the North Korean context, a significant, even august occasion — more so for a young man who has been the top leader of North Korea for just a few months, following the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in December. Sunday was an occasion the nation’s leadership had been focused on for a long, long time; the centenary of Kim Il Sung‘s birth was to be the day that North Korea could proudly say it was a “strong and prosperous nation” — a phrase repeated endlessly (and mindlessly) in North Korean propaganda as far back as I can remember. The nation’s university students have not been attending classes this year; they have been out instead at construction sites, building statues and other monuments of glorification to the Great Leader and the founding of his Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. And so the young man who has thus far projected the image of someone with a common touch (he seems to laugh and joke easily both with ordinary soldiers close to him in age and with Generals old enough to be his grandfather) managed to pull off his grandest public appearance yet without much of a hitch.

(PHOTOS: North Korea Missile Launch Fails)

Yet because he is so young, and because he spent time as a teenager going to high school in Switzerland, one of the richest countries in the West, it’s impossible to watch Kim Jong Un on an occasion like yesterday’s and wonder whether the young man might have a sense of reality — or irony, even — that’s missing among his elders, the men who are power behind his throne. Just two days before the speech and spectacle, North Korea had allowed 50 foreign correspondents to come to witness the launch of what Pyongyang called a satellite, but what the outside world considered a long-range missile. The exercise, presumably, was to demonstrate that the North is indeed a “strong” nation. As it happened, the missile went up from the launch site near the Chinese border, flew for less than two minutes, then plopped pathetically into the Yellow Sea — an abject failure. With the world watching, even the newscaster in Pyongyang conceded as much.

As for the notion that North Korea is becoming a “prosperous” nation, consider that in response to the launch — which violated U.N. resolutions designed to deter Pyongyang from pursuing its ballistic missile program — the Obama administration canceled a food aid program with Pyongyang, which it had agreed to in late February, shortly after Kim Jong Il’s death. (Pyongyang had agreed in return to a “moratorium” on both its nuclear program and its ballistic missile effort. ) North Korea, according to military analysts, spent at minimum tens of millions of dollars on the failed missile launch, yet requires food aid in order to be able to feed its population.

On the day of the glorious anniversary, in other words, it couldn’t be more obvious that North Korea is neither strong nor prosperous. Surely, at some level, young Kim Jong Un must understand this.

(MORE: Kim Comes Clean on Rocket Failure, but Can North Korea Handle the Truth?)

Yet during his speech on Sunday, young Jong Un said he was committed to carrying out the policies of his father, known as “military first politics.” Dating back to the mid-1990s, the policy, simply put, means (as Kim Jong Il put it) “placing top priority of military affairs.” For a dictatorship confronted with a famine that was then killing millions, putting the “military first” made eminent sense for the ruling family. As Cheong Seong Chang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul wrote, the Kim dynasty was then “faced with problems in guaranteeing its political security based on its citizens’ ‘voluntar’ support, and its dependence on coercive force increased as… the domestic economic situation turned more unfavorable.” (Translation: take care of the guys with the guns, lest they take care of you….)

The vast majority of North Korea watchers at the time of Kim Jong Il’s death believed that Jong Un would carry on with his father’s policy, because practically speaking, he has little choice. For all the mythology about the inherent authority of the Kim dynasty in North Korea, the Generals are Jong Un’s key backers. He’s not likely to do anything to anger them — not for a long, long time, anyway. To the contrary, as the speech yesterday indicates, he’s likely to want to appease them.

And they are no doubt very angry right now, in the wake of the humiliating failure of the missile launch. They are likely to want to show the world that North Korea’s military is actually not a joke. How best to do that? As Ralph Cossa, head of the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic and International studies says, “the failure makes it even more likely that the North will now attempt a nuclear test in the not too distant future.”

That, unfortunately, is probably right. Kim Jong Il wasn’t much for public speeches, broadcast nationally (according to some analysts he did it just once), and maybe Jong Un has more of a populist touch, evocative of his grandfather. But when it comes to how the North Korean regime behaves, the bad news is that the new Kim seems like a chip of the old block.

MORE: North Korea’s Rocket Fails, But More Fireworks Could Follow

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New voice, same message as N. Korea shows off military

Posted on 15th April 2012 in The monuments of world

As goose-stepping troops paraded in a square named after his grandfather, North Korea‘s new leader spoke in public for the first time Sunday — but the message was unchanged from previous generations.

“We must strengthen our military in every possible way… and accomplish the goal of building a powerful and prosperous socialist state,” Kim Jong-Un told crowds at a parade glorifying the dynasty which has ruled the country throughout its history.

The huge military parade in Kim Il-Sung Square — featuring tanks, missiles, artillery and thousands of troops — drove home the message. It marked the centenary of the birth of Kim Il-Sung, who founded the nation in 1948 and died in 1994, passing power on to his son Kim Jong-Il.

The new leader, aged only in his late 20s, has put forward a more outgoing image than his father Jong-Il, who died last December. Jong-Il is believed to have spoken publicly just once during his 18 years in power — and that was a single sentence.

Jong-Un — wearing his customary blue Mao-style suit — sounded confident and assured as he made his address, despite a failed rocket launch Friday which was seen as an international embarrassment for the nation.

He waved to the crowd from a balcony at the end of the ceremony.

The parade was staged against one of the world’s most extraordinary urban backdrops — a city centre dominated by massive monuments to the Kims and their ideology.

Huge portraits of the first two leaders were displayed on the square along with banners extolling their virtues. The Juche Tower, a monument to the national ideology of juche (self-reliance), loomed in the background.

“Let’s fight and struggle with our lives for respected Comrade Kim Jong-Un,” read one banner.

Critics say massive military spending by the impoverished but nuclear-armed communist state could be used to buy food for millions of malnourished people.

The North says it needs a Songun (military first) policy to deter enemies like the United States who threaten its socialist system.

A drum roll heralded the arrival of the first troops, goose-stepping in perfect sychronisation.

Military bandsmen, the spring sun glinting off their instruments, played “The Song of General Kim Il-Sung” as his grandson arrived to cheers and applause. A 21-gun salute boomed out.

After the speech, the march past began. The ground shook as troops crashed their feet into the concrete.

Units came both from the regular 1.2 million-strong military and from universities and secondary schools. A mounted parade featured khaki-clad troops in white capes.

There was even a ski troop, dressed in white and riding on a truck with their skis.

Diesel fumes filled the square as vehicles displaying an array of weaponry drove past — trucks with multiple rocket launchers, tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery and an array of short- and medium-range missiles.

Five aircraft staged a fly-past.

Providing a bizarre backdrop, thousands of civilians waved artificial flowers — red Kimjongilia or pink Kimilsungia named after the late leaders.

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Not 'So Ronery': Kim Jong-il Joins His Father In Bronze Form

Posted on 13th April 2012 in The monuments of world
North Korea

Two huge bronze statues now sit as the centre piece of the Mansudae Grand Monument

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has attended a ceremony to unveil the country’s latest political monuments – a statue of his late father Kim Jong-il, which stands next to that of his grandfather, Kim il-Sung.

The twin behemoths, created from bronze, form the centre-piece of the Mansudae Grand Monument in the capital, Pyongyang.

Behind the statues is a mosaic figure of Paekdu Mountain, known as the birthplace of the Korean people.

Also in attendance for the revealing were various political and military leaders of the reclusive communist regime.


North Koreans exit the Mansudae area after an unveiling ceremony

Originally, the square was dominated by a statue of “The Great Leader”, which was erected in 1972 to celebrate Kim Jong-il’s 60th birthday. It remains a tradition in the secretive state that everyone visiting the statue must lay flowers at its feet, while tour groups are forced to bow.


Revealing “The Great Leader”

The addition of the figure of “The Dear Leader” comes just months after his death, and was unveiled to coincide with the county’s celebrations for the 100th anniversary of Kim il-Sung’s birth.

On Friday, a controversial North Korea rocket failed shortly after launch, plunging in pieces into the Yellow Sea. The take-off drew international condemnation from the US, South Korea and Japan.

Enjoy the late leader’s most famous outing (WARNING – strong language):

Some of the world’s most famous political monuments:

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Culture under fire

Posted on 8th April 2012 in The monuments of world

Culture lies on the front line of conflicts across the world. Timbuktu has fallen into the hands of Tuareg rebel forces and shots have been fired around the city’s grand mosque, a Unesco World Heritage Site. This follows on the heels of the shelling of the city of Apamea in Syria.

The citadel of Madiq and the ancient villages in the north of Syria, all of which are Unesco World Heritage Sites, could become collateral damage. They need our protection.

It may seem incongruous to denounce crimes against culture and call for their protection at a time of political instability and humanitarian crisis, but it isn’t.

Protecting culture is a security issue. There can be no lasting peace without respect. Attacks against cultural heritage are attacks against the very identity of communities. They mark a symbolic and real step up in the escalation of a conflict, leading to devastation that can be irreparable and whose impact lasts long after the dust has settled.

Attacks on the past make reconciliation much harder in the future. They can hold societies back from turning the page toward peace.

So protecting cultural heritage is not a luxury. We cannot leave this for better days, when tensions have cooled. To lay the ground for peace, we must act now to protect culture, while tensions are high.

We have seen the power of World Heritage to bring together divided communities and promote international cooperation in difficult contexts.

I witnessed this personally in southeast Europe, for instance, when Unesco helped rebuild the Old Bridge in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, destroyed during the war in the 1990s.

The power of culture was also on display during the restoration of the Koguryo tombs complex in North Korea, undertaken with the financial support of South Korea.

In Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, societies are drawing today on their millennial heritage to come together and look toward the future.

At these times of increasing uncertainty and diminishing resources, this is an asset we cannot overlook.

This doesn’t make it easy. To succeed, nations must unite. The very notion of World Heritage draws on the idea of collective responsibility for a common good. It was born in Egypt in the 1960s, with the international campaign to save the Nubian monuments and remove the Abu Simbel temples from danger. Less than one generation after the devastation of World War II, this was a campaign for global solidarity to safeguard stones and statues, and, through them, a concept of shared humanity.

We need ambitious leadership again today.

Protecting the cultural heritage of the world concerns us all. It is force for mutual understanding and a powerhouse of local development. Unesco is the custodian of this idea and its practice. We are celebrating this year the 40th anniversary of our World Heritage Convention, which embodies this vision.

This is a fragile process that can never be taken for granted. A few shells are enough to destroy a millennial site forever. We all remember the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan. A few hours of pillaging are enough for priceless antique objects to disappear in illicit trafficking.

This is why Unesco alerts states of their responsibility to protect culture properties in the event of conflict and to prohibit and prevent the illicit trafficking of cultural goods. This is why we are working with the national authorities, with the World Customs Organisation and Interpol, and the International Council of Museums, as well as auction houses, to protect humanity’s cultural heritage and prevent its pillaging.

We do all of this, because we believe culture matters for peace. For culture too, there is a responsibility to protect.

Irina Bokova is director general of Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation

©IHT

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Troops from Iraq, Afghanistan to be honored in DC

Posted on 29th February 2012 in The monuments of world

WASHINGTON (AP) — It took almost 60 years for World War II veterans to get a monument in Washington. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial opened less than a decade after their war ended. Now with the Iraq war just over, and Afghanistan continuing, there are already plans to honor those veterans in a new National Mall tribute in the works.

It wouldn’t be a full-scale Iraq and Afghanistan war memorial. But the group that built the Vietnam memorial wall of names tells The Associated Press that it will expand the scope of a planned education center nearby to include service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their photos would be displayed alongside those of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who died in the Vietnam conflict that ended in 1975.

The new facility, due to break ground in November and open in 2014, is an offshoot of the Vietnam memorial that opened on the Mall in 1982. The new underground space, to be called The Education Center at The Wall, will feature stories of the long line of U.S. war dead from various conflicts including Vietnam.

A major piece of the exhibition will be a video wall that will show visitors the photos, names and details of fallen fighters who had a birthday that particular day. That display, and some other parts of the exhibits, will now include veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund decided to expand the scope of the project to welcome their fellow veterans home, said Jan Scruggs, the founder and president of the fund. Vietnam veterans who experienced an often bitter return from an unpopular war want to give veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan a proper homecoming, he said.

“What is important now is that we tell the story about these people and what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and pay homage to their service, their duty,” said Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran. “This will be the parade for these guys coming back from Iraq. This will be where these guys go.”

Justin Constantine, a major in the Marine reserves from Fairfax, Va., who was shot and injured in Iraq and is consulting on the project, said he knows at least six fallen Marines who will be honored. He predicts many wounded warriors will want to visit the site.

“To get this kind of recognition in the nation’s capital, right next to other very significant military memorials, means a lot of to us,” he said. “It will make sure our sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

As the last U.S. troops have returned home from Iraq, there has been some criticism of the lack of a parade in Washington or New York or other fanfare to honor their sacrifices.

Constantine said he didn’t join the Marines to have a ticker-tape parade when he returned home. Still, he said, he doesn’t want his fellow veterans to be forgotten.

The 42-year-old veteran was in Iraq only six weeks before he was shot in the head in October 2006. It took him five years to recover, and he will undergo more surgeries, including facial reconstruction, and therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.

He sees parallels between Iraq and the Vietnam war, but also differences with the absence of a draft. “We all know only 1 percent of the American population is involved in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

Building an official national memorial honoring veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan or other terrorism hotspots will likely take years, though some smaller monuments have already been built in places like Fort Hood, Texas and Kokomo, Ind. Politicians in Washington also have sought to mark the end of the Iraq war and show their appreciation. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama is hosting a White House dinner to honor Iraq veterans.

Constantine said it’s too soon for a large memorial in Washington, though, because many of the same troops who served in Iraq are still serving in Afghanistan. The war isn’t over.

Still, he wants people to see the faces of soldiers who served and died in the most recent wars.

“I think it would be a tragedy if the American public forgot about us,” he said. “I hope at some point it will be something more permanent than pictures.”

Like those who served in Vietnam, the veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan did the jobs their country asked them to do, Scruggs said. Those commonalities will tie their stories to the broader history of U.S. battles.

When the center is dedicated in 2014, organizers hope to host a huge parade as they did when the Vietnam memorial was dedicated in 1982. Recent veterans would march up front with Vietnam veterans following behind.

Visitors to the new center will eventually walk through a timeline of U.S. military history, from Bunker Hill to Baghdad. There will be historical details from each battle, including the number of casualties.

The museum will be fairly small at 20,000 square feet and will host about 350 people circulating through at a time.

Some of the more than 250,000 items left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, including Purple Hearts from World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, will be shown. Another exhibit could feature the last battle flag brought home from Iraq. Exhibit designs are being drafted by Ralph Appelbaum, who created installations for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and other sites.

At the end of a tour, visitors will reach a large screen to see veterans’ faces, followed by a presentation on their shared values — such as loyalty, honor, duty and a willingness to sacrifice for their country. After that, a video screen will rise to reveal a collection of flags once draped over the coffins of troops from World War I through Iraq.

Each visitor also will receive a dog tag with the name of a service member who died in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. On the back, it will say “He (or she) did his duty. Will you do yours?” with a challenge for each visitor to do something positive in his or her community and report back online.

Including these troops is meant to be a permanent fixture, even if a traditional memorial is later built to honor veterans from the recent wars.

“Even when they finally get their memorial built, the symbolic importance of showing the people in the most recent wars will be overwhelming in importance,” Scruggs said. “That will never end.”

___

The Education Center at The Wall: http://www.buildthecenter.org

___

Brett Zongker can be reached at http://twitter.com/DCArtBeat.

At least 10 people have been killed by a tornado that hit southern Illinois this morning: http://t.co/2PHL1p75
Arrested Egyptian man claims he’s not the al-Qaida leader authorities are after: http://t.co/NoBxnTKa
U.S. says North Korea agrees to nuclear moratorium: http://t.co/iPqs9PId
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Inside the time warp that is North Korea

Posted on 25th February 2012 in The monuments of world

The Irish Times – Saturday, February 25, 2012

TOM FARRELL in Pyongyang

Though in power for just over two months, the personality cult around Kim Jong-un is already thriving, reports the first Irish journalist inside the country since his accession

THE NATION he ruled may still be an international pariah, but to judge by the International Friendship Exhibition, the late Kim Jong-il was a popular man indeed.

The building housing the exhibition rises from the pine-forested hills of North Pyongan province, close to North Korea’s border with China. It appears as a huge box of burnished concrete, topped by a multi-coloured “hip saddle” roof. Like most buildings erected by the North Korean state, it seems like a cross-breeding of Soviet modernism and Korean tradition, a melding of the communist and the Confucian. Flanking the immense patterned doors are soldiers in fur hats, each carrying a silver-plated Kalashnikov rifle.

When Kim Jong-il, the “Dear Leader”, died on December 17th last, State television broadcast images from the snowy capital of Pyongyang. In the streets, in public squares and at various monuments, crowds of North Koreans wailed. The purpose of the exhibition parallels that footage, purporting to demonstrate that the love of foreigners for North Korea’s rulers almost matches that of its subjects.

The world’s youngest head of state led the Dear Leader’s funeral procession. At 29, Kim Jong-un has already been named Great Successor. An editorial in the Pyongyang Times on December 24th stated: “The journey through our revolution is arduous and the present situation is grave, but no force in the world can check the revolutionary advance our party, army and people are making under the wise leadership of Kim Jong-un.”

The exhibition indicates the nature of that advance so far. It was opened in 1978 at the behest of Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, who took power in September 1948 with Soviet backing, and ruled the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as Suryong (Great Leader) for the next 46 years.

Visitors must divest themselves of cameras and bags and place cloth “slippers” on their feet so as not to dirty the marble floors. In a cavernous room dominated by a statue of the Dear Leader, there are gifts from 170 nations. These include a flower vase from fellow “Axis of Evil” designate, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent in February 2004. A bejewelled sword and scabbard was sent by Muammar Gadafy in January 1995. (The fate of Gadafy last year clearly caused consternation in North Korea; in April about 200 North Koreans living in Libya were ordered not to come home lest they bring news of revolts in the Arab world.)

On other floors, rooms contain cabinets of gifts from the world’s nations. In the one marked Ireland, there is crystal sent in October 1990 by the chairman of Sinn Féin, and some Royal Tara China from The Workers’ Party sent in January 1997. Large sections of the exhibition are closed due to “renovations”.

On February 16th, what would have been Kim Jong-il’s 70th birthday was marked with parades, gymnastic displays and the unveiling of statues. Worship of the Dear Leader plays an important part in buttressing the authority of the latest incarnation of North Korea’s personality cult.

THERE IS plenty of evidence of this phenomenon in Pyongyang. At first glance, the city gives the impression, accentuated by the fierce cold, that the clocks stopped ticking 30 years ago. China next door may have embraced all the trappings of consumer culture, but its flashing neon signs and billboards for cosmetics or soft drinks are almost non-existent here.

Yet cranes are visible on the skyline. In some parts of the city construction sites are alive with the splutter of jackhammers and helmeted construction workers. These could be sites in the South Korean capital of Seoul were it not for the bundles of red flags fluttering nearby.

Much of this building is going on in the central sectors of the capital and close to the banks of the river Taedong. Further out fresh apartments are going up: the government recently pledged to house an extra 100,000 people in the city of three million in 2012.

Visitors to Pyongyang have noticed an upsurge in the amount of Japanese and European vehicles on the capital’s once somnolent traffic lanes. “Far more than even 12 months ago,” says a British businessman who travels regularly to Pyongyang.

It is even possible to see some residents with mobile phones, even if these only function within North Korea. In December 2008, the Egyptian telecoms group Orascom agreed to set up a mobile network, Koryolink, in which it now holds a 75 per cent stake. More than three years on it is estimated that more than one million North Koreans have mobile phones.

As part of the $400 million deal, Orascom also agreed to finance the completion of the massive Ryugyong Hotel 20 years after it ground to a halt. During that time, the Ryugyong, more than any other building in Pyongyang, came to symbolise the regime’s self-defeating hubris.

The 105-storey pyramid had been conceived by Kim Il-sung as a magnet for foreign investment and tourism, but when Soviet funds and cheap raw materials dried up after 1991 the site fell silent. When the Ryugyong finally opens later this year it will offer visitors such niceties as revolving restaurants and business facilities.

WATCHING ALL this, it could be tempting to surmise that perhaps the first stirrings of a Soviet-style glasnost or perestroika are under way. But such speculation would be premature. The surge in construction work around Pyongyang was authorised some years ago by Kim Jong-il.

Scaffolding and sheeting now cover the most hallowed of the estimated 34,000 separate statues of the dynasty’s founder. At Mansu hill, a 65-foot high statue of Kim Il-sung stands in burnished bronze, one arm held aloft. North Korea will mark the centenary of his birth in April. Far from indicating a new engagement with the outside world, the building work anticipates a further burst of cultic worship.

“What I’ve been struck by since January is how much Kim Jong-un has been paraded by the regime,” says Aidan Foster Carter, an expert on North Korea at Leeds University. “After Kim Il-sung died in 1994, the country effectively shut down for three years and Kim Jong-il was little seen. It’s the opposite now: the regime’s rhetoric has been very strong since 17th December.”

This dynastic regime is notorious for its belligerent nature, having conducted nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 and with international talks to resolve the nuclear issue having stalled. North Korea also possesses intermediate-range ballistic missiles including the Taepodong-2, which could theoretically hit targets in Alaska.

The neophyte Kim Jong-un is surrounded by ageing and highly conservative generals and ministers, most notably his uncle, Jang Song-taek (66), the vice-chairman of the powerful National Defence Commission. His grandfather formulated a national ideology called Juche (self-reliance) and his father augmented this with a policy of Songun, roughly translating as “military first politics”. It is rumoured that Jang Song-taek was the de facto North Korean premier during Kim Jong-il’s final years, when he was debilitated by a stroke.

“Jang Song-taek is a purely political figure, very conservative and ostensibly anti-market,” says Leonid Petrov, a Korea expert at the University of Sydney. “In this, Jang Song-taek ensures Kim Jong-un’s accession and stability in North Korea. Any reform in North Korea will destabilise the situation.”

UNLIKE HIS father, who was formally inaugurated as heir apparent in 1980 and had 14 years to prepare for power, Kim Jong-un only became prominent two years ago. In September 2010 he was appointed to the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and made a general in the Korean People’s Army. On November 23rd of that year, artillery shells and rockets bombarded Yeonpyeong, an island near the maritime border between the Koreas, killing two South Korean marines, two civilians and wounding 18 others.

South Korea responded with a barrage of its own. Relations with Seoul were already at their lowest ebb following the sinking of a South Korean naval corvette, the Cheonan, in March of that year, which South Korea blamed on a North Korean torpedo. Pyongyang furiously denied involvement, but there has been speculation the island bombardment evidenced Kim Jong-un’s efforts to prove himself as a force within the army.

“Based on my own experience of life in North Korea, there are no such things as errors or accidents. It must have been ordered by the people at the top,” says Kim Joo-il, a former captain who escaped to China in 2005 and now lives in London.

But Kim Jong-un’s rise to power was unexpected; the obvious heir was his oldest brother Kim Jong-nam, now 40. Nam fell out of favour with his father after his arrest in 2001 in Tokyo’s Narita Airport while travelling on a forged Dominican Republic passport. He was apparently en route to Tokyo Disneyland with his son. More recently, in a series of exchanges with the Japanese journalist Yoji-Gomi, the Macau-based Nam has spoken in disparaging terms of his younger brother’s prospects, predicting he will be a figurehead, while real power rests with the army hierarchy.

Once outside the capital, the North Korean countryside in winter is spectacularly bleak. The main highways usually do not see much traffic, but when they ice over groups of a dozen or more people materialise, hacking and pounding the roads with shovels. Bundles of red flags rise at intervals from the countryside. In fields and on the crests of hills, stone slabs rise decorated with Korean characters. These translate into such slogans as “Long Live Kim Il-sung” or “We will do as the party tells us”.

North Korea was ravaged by floods and famine in the late 1990s, killing between two and three million people. The situation is not as precarious today, but United Nations food agencies estimate three million people in North Korea will need food aid this year.

For the Great Successor, his authority will depend on more than monuments and gifts from abroad.

Tom Farrell is a freelance journalist

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Top official dismisses concerns about Kim Jong Un

Posted on 18th January 2012 in The monuments of world

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A senior North Korean official dismissed concerns about Kim Jong Un‘s readiness to lead, saying he spent years working closely with his late father and helping him make key policy decisions on economic and military affairs.

In the first interview with foreign journalists by a high-level North Korean official since Kim Jong Il‘s Dec. 17 death, Politburo member and Kim family confidante Yang Hyong Sop told The Associated Press that North Koreans were in good hands with their young new leader. He emphasized an unbroken continuity from father to son that suggests a continuation of Kim Jong Il’s key policies.

“We suffered the greatest loss in the history of our nation as a result of the sudden, unexpected and tragic loss of the great leader Kim Jong Il,” he said in the interview Monday at Mansudae Assembly Hall, seat of the North Korean legislative body.

“But still, we are not worried a bit,” he added, “because we know that we are being led by comrade Kim Jong Un, who is fully prepared to carry on the heritage created by the great Gen. Kim Jong Il.”

Despite Yang’s assertion of a lengthy behind-the-scenes role for Kim Jong Un, the world was introduced to the heir only in September 2010, prior to which he had been kept out of the public eye for most of his life. Though still in his 20s, he was quickly promoted to four-star general and named a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

The new ruler’s youth and quick ascension to power have raised questions in foreign capitals about how ready he is to rule over this nation of 24 million with a nuclear program as well as chronic trouble feeding all its people.

Yang said he had no concerns about Kim’s ability to lead.

“The respected comrade Kim Jong Un had long assisted the great Gen. Kim Jong Il,” he told AP. “It’s not a secret that he has helped the great general in many different aspects — not only in military affairs but also the economy and other areas as well.”

Daily life in this cold, somber capital has begun to return to normal one month after Kim’s death, reportedly from a heart attack while riding on his private train.

The white mourning bouquets and massive portraits of the departed leader have been cleared from Pyongyang’s main buildings and monuments. People are busy getting back to daily life, with children whizzing down icy slopes on wooden sleds and workers running to catch morning buses and trams as the Kim Jong Un ode “Footsteps” blares over loudspeakers.

Vast Kim Il Sung Square, where a sea of mourners converged after Kim’s death, was ghostly quiet except for a few people who scurried quickly across the frigid plaza.

In recent weeks, as North Koreans filled the capital’s streets with their emotive mourning and the government staged elaborate funeral proceedings, party and military officials moved quickly to install Kim’s son as “supreme leader” of the people, party and military.

A soft-spoken octogenarian who is vice president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly and a standing member of the powerful Political Bureau of the Communist party’s Central Committee, Yang has long-standing ties with the Kim family that stretch back to his close alliance with the nation’s founder, Kim Il Sung.

During a 2010 interview with Associated Press Television News in Pyongyang, he provided the first confirmation by a government official that Kim Jong Un would eventually become the nation’s next leader.

“He knows what the exact intention of the great Gen. Kim Jong Il was,” he said Monday.

His comments this week indicated there would be little change to major policies laid out by Kim Jong Un’s father in the three years before his death. Yang said the new leader was focused on a “knowledge-based” economy and looking at economic reforms enacted by other nations, including China.

The North has increasingly looked to China for guidance on how to revitalize its moribund economy, particularly as South Korea, Japan and other nations have frozen trade and aid to the North amid concerns about its nuclear ambitions.

Little is known about Kim Jong Un’s background and experience, though North Koreans have been told he studied at Kim Il Sung Military University and was involved in military operations such as the November 2010 artillery attack on a South Korean island that killed four South Koreans.

Earlier this month, North Korea’s state-run broadcaster aired a documentary about the new leader that began filling in some blanks from before his public debut.

The footage shows him observing the April 2009 launch of a long-range rocket and quotes him threatening to wage war against any nation attempting to intercept the rocket, which North Korea claimed was carrying a communications satellite but the United States, South Korea and Japan say was really a test of its long-range missile technology.

It was the first indication of his involvement in that controversial launch.

Yet if Kim Jong Un was playing a prominent behind-the-scenes role prior to 2010, his training period would have been much shorter than that of his Kim Jong Il, who spent 20 years working under his own father, Kim Il Sung. Even after his father’s death, Kim Jong Il observed a three-year mourning period before formally assuming leadership.

___

Follow AP’s Korea Bureau Chief Jean H. Lee at twitter.com/newsjean and Chief Asia Photographer David Guttenfelder at twitter.com/dguttenfelder.

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Kim Jong Un 'won't last long' says older brother (but he's not jealous)

Posted on 17th January 2012 in The monuments of world

  • Kim Jong Nam claims his half brother is a ‘joke to the outside world’
  • 40-something says real power will be held by military elite and top party officials
  • Kim Jong Il’s eldest son fell out of favour after being caught trying to sneak into Japan on fake passport
  • ‘Playboy’ son known for his love of casinos

By
Wil Longbottom

Last updated at 3:55 PM on 17th January 2012

Former North Korean leader’s eldest son has said the new regime will ‘not last long’ under the rule of his half brother, it has been reported.

South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said that in an email Kim Jong Nam described the succession of power to Kim Jong Un as ‘a joke to the outside world’.

And he said his half brother would be ‘just a nominal figure’, adding: ‘The members of the power elite will be the ones in actual power.’

'A joke': Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Il's eldest son, claims his half brother will not last long in power in North Korea

‘A joke’: Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Il’s eldest son, claims his half brother will not last long in power in North Korea

Kim Jong Un was only announced as Kim Jong Il’s successor in September 2010 and he was thrust into leadership with the ‘great leader’ died last month.

The 27-year-old has little experience of leadership or dealing with alliance-making necessary to holding on to power in the notoriously reclusive state.

‘Without reforms, North Korea will collapse, and when such changes take place, the regime will collapse,’ the newspaper quoted Kim Jong Nam as saying.

‘The Kim Jong Un regime will not last long.’

Sibling rivalry: Kim Jong Nam is said to have fallen out of favour with his father after he was caught trying to sneak into Japan with a fake passport in 2001

Sibling rivalry: Kim Jong Nam is said to have fallen out of favour with his father after he was caught trying to sneak into Japan with a fake passport in 2001

Power struggle: New leader Kim Jong Un will be a 'peripheral' figure in North Korea, according to his half brother

Power struggle: New leader Kim Jong Un will be a ‘peripheral’ figure in North Korea, according to his half brother

North Koreans have been told their new leader studied at Kim Il Sung Military University and was involved in military operations including the November 2010 artillery attack on a South Korean island that saw four people killed.

He is seen as most like his father in manner and personality – crucial for the personality cult which is used to suppress opposition.

Kim Jong Nam, aged around 40, is known for his playboy lifestyle and love of casinos.

He is believed to have fallen out of favour with his father after he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001, claiming he wanted to visit Disney’s Tokyo resort.

He told the newspaper: ‘Because I was educated in the West, I was able to enjoy freedom from early age, and I still love being free.

Dictator in training: Kim Jong Il inspects Huichon power station in May last year, along with generals and his son

Dictator in training: Kim Jong Il inspects Huichon power station in May last year, along with generals and his son

Rise to prominence: Despite being relatively unknown 15 months ago, Kim Jong Un was appointed a four-star general and an vice chairman in the North Korean communist party

Rise to prominence: Despite being relatively unknown 15 months ago, Kim Jong Un was appointed a four-star general and an vice chairman in the North Korean communist party

Cult of personality: Since he took over as leader of North Korea, the country's military has been keen to play down his lack of experience with bombastic displays like this one in Pyongyang

Cult of personality: Since he took over as leader of North Korea, the country’s military has been keen to play down his lack of experience with bombastic displays like this one in Pyongyang

AP OPENS NEW BUREAU IN NORTH KOREA – INSIDE ‘STATE-RUN’ AGENCY

The Associated Press has become the first international news organisation to establish a full-time presence in North Korea.

In a ceremony a month after the death of long-time ruler Kim Jong Il, AP president and chief executive Tom Curley inaugurated a new office inside the headquarters of the state-run Korean Central News Agency in Pyongyang.

The bureau expands the agency’s presence in North Korea, following a breakthrough in 2006 when it opened a video office in the capital.

Exclusive video from AP was used by media outlets around the world following Kim Jong Il’s death.

It marks an important gesture after decades of being off-limits to international journalists.

AP, an independent 165-year-old news cooperative founded in New York, has operations in more than 100 countries and employs nearly 2,500 journalists.

Mr Curley said: ‘Beyond this door lies a path to vastly larger understanding and cultural enrichment for millions around the world.

‘Regardless of whether you were born in Pyonyang or Pennsylvania, you are aware of the bridge being created today.’

‘The reason I visit Macau so often is because it’s the most free and liberal place near China, where my family lives.’

The South Korean newspaper said a Japanese journalist, Yoji Komi, exchanged almost 100 emails with Kim Jong Nam between 2004 and December last year.

It comes as a senior North Korean party official dismissed concerns about Kim Jong Un’s readiness to lead.

Politburo member and family confidante Yang Hyong Sop said the country’s people were in good hands with their new leader.

He said: ‘We suffered the greatest loss in the history of our nation as a result of the sudden, unexpected and tragic loss of the great leader Kim Jong Il.

‘But still, we are not worried a bit,
because we know that we are being led by comrade Kim Jong Un, who is
fully prepared to carry on the heritage created by the great General Kim
Jong Il.’

White mourning
bouquets and massive portraits of the deceased leader have been cleared
from capital Pyongyang’s main buildings and monuments.

After
Kim Jong Il’s death, streets and squares in Pyongyang were filled with
hysterical people weeping and crying out in apparent anguish.

His son’s rapid ascension to power has
raised questions about how ready he is to inherit rule over the
24million population with a nuclear programme as well as chronic trouble
feeding all its people.

Mr
Yang added: ‘It’s not a secret that he has helped the great general in
many different aspects – not only in military affairs but also the
economy and other areas as well.’

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