Done and done

People still ask me why I'm not updating this blog anymore, so I thought I'd provide a quick explanation:

laziness.

The long explanation is that there are only a handful of people in the world with my name, so it's not very hard for random stalkers, prospective employers and mothers of my babies to find it (it's the first result in google when you type in my name).

I prefer email anyway as it's more personal.
I'm at dirk at mccormick dot cx

Dirk

House Demolition and Snowboarding Triumph - of Death!

The other night I was walking to the pub with some of my housemates. On the way up the hill someone spotted a poster stapled to a phone pole. It was a picture of a house with the words "Have you seen this house?" at the top. Apparently there's a group of people in our neighbourhood who have formed a committee to prevent the demolition of several really nice old houses in the area.
Unfortunately, the house pictured was ours.

I'm living in a beautiful 1920s wooden house, that was turned into an Inn and then recently divided into individual units. We each have our own bathroom and we share the kitchen and living room so you can hang out with other people if you want to. There are 10 others living in the house, so there's quite a cast of characters from the guy who does medical trials to the architect to the artist to the human rights worker. We get quite a few itinerants too. Fortunately everyone seems to get along pretty well.



It seems the Inn was some kind of honeymoon hotel, as a few of the rooms have a giant spa with a fireplace next to it. Unfortunately mine doesn't, but if you open my closet door it has a toilet inside, which is kind of romantic I guess. Also the shower I share with a couple of other guys has two shower heads, so you can wash both arm pits at once. At last!

I bought a bike a couple of days after arriving, but it was stolen three days later. So then I bought a bike and a big U-lock which has done the job so far. I work within easy cycling distance of my house in Capitol Hill, the young hipster gay district. There's no shortage of freaks so I fit in pretty well. This morning I caught a lift to work with Ross. While he was in the post office an old man hobbled past with a bright orange beanie, big white beard, walking stick, bright green backpack and very pretty floral skirt. He must have been quite chilly because it was close to zero and he was showing quite a bit of leg.

I've been a lot of bit snowboarding, and in fact myself and Ross are going to head up to the local ski resort tonight after work. It's only 45 minutes away and I've become quite the master of snow boarding already:


I don't have any big plans for Christmas. The flights home are around $3,000 US so I decided not to go home this year. It wouldn't really be worth it for less than two weeks and I don't have that much holiday accrued either.



Have a good Christmas everyone! I'll miss you.

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Getting to Seattle

The customs official looked from me to my papers and back a few times.
"The flight number is 49 not 46"
"Righto"

I tried to put on my most passive expression but I was anxious. After a scare at my visa interview in Dublin and the expectation that he was about to start asking questions like "Why were you in North Korea during a nuclear test" it was hard not to feel my stomach churning. This was it. Seattle airport customs. The final barrier to my entry into the United States. I just had to get past this one heartless paper pusher and I'd be on my way.

"Sir you're going to need to go down to the end of the corridor there"
"Is that where the bags are?"
"No sir, that's the secondary questioning unit"


Me and Derm at my going away party

After landing in Dublin the previous thursday from Beijing, I'd gone out to see off Eoin, a friend who I wouldn't be seeing again. Needless to say it went on pretty late.

My interview at the US consulate was at 8am the following morning.
When I first arrived at the consulate I hadn't felt particularly worried. The guards at the gate were polite but not friendly, and I was suddenly very aware that I was on American soil. This feeling was heightened when the format of the interviews became apparent. They weren't carried out in private as I'd expected. There were three glass screens, each framing a man in a suit with an utterly humourless expression.

A Phillipino woman was called up. The suit asked her some very frank and pitiless questions about her marriage to an American she was going to the US to be with. The rest of us waiting in seats behind her looked at the ground or out the window, pretending not to listen. A well dressed man and woman to my left, who'd recognised each other warmly as they came in, chatted more nervously. After three minutes of questioning the suit informed the Phillipino woman that her visa had been declined.

I swallowed, suddenly aware of all sorts of holes in my story. The Amazon people had casually brushed aside my question of how I'd prove that I had ties outside the US that would indicate I had a reason to leave on the expiry of my visa. You'll be fine, they'd said.
I had pictured myself having a laugh about the North Korean adventure, maybe sharing one or two stories about nights out in Dublin, receiving a jovial pat on the back, a stamp on my passport and the well wishes of my friendly local bureaucrat.


Cormac Thickbeard

I quickly changed my story in my mind. I didn't have any ties in Europe so I couldn't breezily claim that I might be coming back if the mood took me, as I'd originally intended to. I'd have to say I was going back to Australia, where my family are. That was far more convincing. But how to explain why I'd be going back to jobless Perth? Perhaps Sydney would sound more likely.

My thoughts were interrupted by the declaration to a Nigerian family that their visa was being denied. They'd escaped Nigeria as refugees, then returned to visit relatives when the government had changed. The idiot behind the glass had kept asking why they had gone back if they'd escaped as refugees, despite the poor father's protestations that the government was no longer the autocracy it once was.

My stomach dropped through the floor as my name was announced. In my mind I ran over the questions to ask when my application was rejected, was there any right to appeal, would one rejection be cited in future applications. I placed my index finger on the fingerprint scanner as requested, trying to look calm but wondering if it would measure my racing pulse as well.

He looked down at my papers for a minute without saying anything, as my thoughts wandered bizarrely onto how anyone could justify putting such a stereotypical customs official into that position. His dark hair was brushed across like a 50s general and held down by a layer of gel. Black rimmed glasses reflected the details of my application as his eyes flitted across the pages coldly.
"How long have you been in Ireland." It was a statement more than a question.
"Two and a half years."
"How many companies have you worked for?"
"Two."
He hadn't looked up, and continued flicking through the pages for another few seconds.
"We'll send it out to you by Monday."

I stood for a moment, unsure what had just happened. He looked up for the first time, questioningly, almost threateningly, and I quickly muttered thanks and turned around before he could ask any more questions, trying not to show my relief too obviously as I walked out of the embassy.


Me Dec and Morten

The steady hum of the baggage machines on the level below seemed eerily loud as I walked past rows of empty cubicles towards the secondary search unit. A large bald man who looked like a prison guard grunted that I should sit down while he interviewed a dishevelled man in his early 30s. He asked a few questions, and then told the man to go and fetch his baggage. The official who'd sent him down here walked briskly over and commented that he'd had dull eyes and followed her finger as she'd asked him questions. She said she thought he might have barbiturates "inside him".
I felt myself turning pale.
When the man returned with his baggage, the prison guard picked up a pair of rubber gloves and told him to follow as he walked into a back room.

After 20 tense minutes, another official came out and started shuffling around with some papers. I went up the desk and asked if I could call Ross and Val who were waiting for me in the arrivals hall.
"Sure you can, just let me read over this guy's papers".
I recognised my name on the forms in front of him.
"Oh that's actually mine."
He looked up at me, then down at the papers, then back at me again.
"Ok you can just go ahead there", he said smiling, and pointed down the escalator to freedom.

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North Korea - Part 6

While in North Korea, I found the constant stress of having to watch what I said to be quite mentally and physically demanding. I woke up each morning with a sore jaw from grinding my teeth, and didn't sleep particularly well.

Coming across the border from North Korea to Dandong in China was like taking a cold shower. Anyone who believes that communism is a superior system should pay a visit to the North. Yes, it's also an autocratic system, but I don't think it's a coincidence that no democratic state has ever been a communist state. People are smart enough to know it doesn't work.



I did learn a lot about perspective though.

For example, North Korea is accused of spending a quarter of its meagre GDP on the military, while its people are left to starve.
America spends $450bn on the military, not including the campaign in Iraq. This is about 4% of GDP and about half of discretionary spending, that is, money left over after accounting for everything else it needs to pay for (It is also about half of the entire rest of the world's military spending). It spends 0.14% of GDP on foreign aid, the lowest rate of any rich country in the world.
Looking at things with a global perspective then, the US in one of the least generous countries in the world in terms of helping the needy.

Similarly, calling North Korea an "evil" regime because of its human rights record is entirely justified, but also entirely hypocritical in light of America's recent record of sending prisoners to friendly despotic governments in order to have them tortured.



I'm not an apologist. North Korea fully deserves the opprobrium heaped upon it for its treatment of its people, and the US acts overwhelmingly in the interests of freedom. But it was interesting hearing the other perspective and applying western criticisms to ourselves.

I think I've said as much as I want to for the moment about North Korea. If you get a chance, go there. It was the most interesting trip I have ever made.

My photos are here.

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North Korea - Part 5

We spent the afternoon looking at some ancient Korean tombs and palaces, and then headed back up to Pyongyang the next morning. After seeing the DMZ and all the faintly ridiculous propaganda put out by both sides, I was looking forward to the Korean War Museum.


American helicopter captured during the war

As I said earlier, the North Koreans are pretty keen to make the point that the war was started by the Americans. The war museum is focused around this topic. There are displays of classified documents found in Seoul when the North swept over South Korea in their initial attack during the war. The documents are from the period just before the war, and are mostly written by lower-ranking soldiers opining that South Koreans and Americans are causing most of the skirmishes on the border or that America should attack. There are also some newspaper articles expressing similar ideas.
From our point of view, they're just opinions. From the point of view of someone in a culture where no one, especially not in the military, dares deviate even slightly from the official line, they're all the evidence that is needed to prove that America intended and proceeded to start the war.


USS Pueblo

That afternoon we visited the USS Pueblo, an American spy ship captured off the coast of NK in the late 60s. At the time the incident caused a stir because the crew signed a confession stating that they were spys and had deliberately broken international law by crossing into North Korean territorial waters, and told the international press they were being treated humanely. However in several photos taken by the North Koreans for propaganda purposes, such as this one, they gave the camera the finger, a gesture which the North Koreans didn't initally comprehend. After their release some claimed they were tortured and that this torture was intensified when the North Koreans realised what the finger meant.
In order to get the crew back The US wrote an apology and a promise not to spy again, which they immediately retracted once the crew had been released after 11 months in captivity.


Lessons at the Children's Palace

The next day we went to see the children's palace, where the most gifted students go to study and suffer gawking tourists all day. The kids were phenomenally talented. One six year old girl played the Korean harp so fast I could barely see her fingers.
The building itself was another monumental marble edifice, several stories high.


Children's Palace

In the evening we went to the fine art museum, in which we weren't allowed to take photos of any paintings of the dear leader or great leader, of which there were many, but were permitted to take a photo of this monstrosity:


"We will wipe america off the face of the earth"

Finally we paid a quick visit to a bookshop where I picked up The US Imperialists Started the Korean War and I leafed through a children's book expounding the virtues of Juche philosophy.
Juche is Kim Il Sung's philosophy of self reliance. In essence it states that North Koreans should rely on themselves, economically, militarily, and politically.


Juche Tower, Pyongyang

The children's book is about a boy and girl who come home to discover their mother has been eaten by a wolf, who has then dressed in her clothing to fool them into also being eaten. They realise what's going on and consider trying to kill it with an axe but opt to run out of the house. The wolf chases them and in desperation they pray to heaven for salvation.

A rope drops from a tree, and they climb up it to safety. It turns out that a woodsman was hanging out in the tree. When the wolf has gone he lets them down again. Then he scolds them. "You shouldn't have prayed to heaven for help. God doesn't exist. You should have killed the wolf yourselves with the axe."


Father of North Korean political philosophy, economic disaster

Unfortunately the philosophy of self-reliance has led to economic and political disaster for North Korea. The fact is, countries are much more successful when relying on each other. This is the basis for the system of free trade, that some countries are better suited to producing certain types of goods or services, and everyone is better off selling what they are best at and buying from the best.

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North Korea - Part 4

When we got back from Wusan, most of the group went on a helicopter to Mount Paekdu, and the other four of us traveled down to the thin strip of land that separates the South from the North. Probably the most dangerous place in North Korea and one of the most heavily militarized places in the world, it’s known (ironically) as the demilitarized zone.




At the end of World War II, Korea was divided along the 38th parallel by the allies. In 1948 the Russians installed a communist government in the North and the US installed a capitalist government in the South. Frequent fighting along the border led to the North Koreans invading South Korea in mid-1950. According to western history, the North Koreans invaded in order to unify the country under their government. The North Koreans are at pains to disagree, with much of their history and propaganda centred around the theme that it was the US who invaded first then tricked the rest of the world into joining them in a war.

They really are very keen to press home the point. I brought back a book from North Korea called The US Imperialists Started the Korean War. It’s not the most objective document I’ve ever read. It should be noted however, that there were many in the American administration at the time who believed a war would be to the US’ advantage, although if they were to attack it probably would have been a year or so later.
In Mao, The Unknown Story (that I wrote about recently) the authors claim that Mao engineered the Korean war as an ultimately futile attempt to acquire nuclear weapons.


Statue of Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang

Whatever its cause, after three years and about three million deaths, the war achieved essentially no territorial gain for either side. There was never a formal peace treaty signed, so in theory the North and South are still at war.
At the end of the war a so-called demilitarized zone was created between the two countries. It’s about four kilometres wide and spans the peninsula. At Kaesong there is a small rectangle of land that is used for meetings between North and South.

We were somewhat nervous going down to the border a couple of days after a nuclear test. There aren’t actually many visible signs of military activity, but many of the mountains near the border are hollowed out and full of military machinery. When we arrived however, the soldiers seemed relaxed to the point of boredom.
Apparently on the South Korean side, you have to dress up (ie no jeans) and you have to sign all sorts of waivers. Supposedly if the North Koreans see westerners wearing jeans they’ll take photos to use in their propaganda. South Korea obviously hasn’t heard of the internet.
In the North there’s no messing around. They showed us a model of the area, and then we piled into a van and headed down the road to see the buildings where the armistice was signed.




The lieutenant-colonel who escorted us was a particularly dour fellow, and I tried to lighten the mood by asking why it was that North Korean men don’t wear beards. Our group guide seemed amused enough but perhaps something was lost in translation, because the lieutenant-colonel’s response was a rather cryptic “I’ll tell you later”. Perhaps it’s a matter of state secrecy and he didn’t want the South Koreans to hear from their listening post on the border. At any rate he never did tell me.

We were shown around the room where the negotiations were held. It was quite a bizarre feeling sitting in the original chair in which the American negotiators worked out the details of the armistice with the North. I think it’s partly because there is no one else there and the buildings haven’t changed, so you get the feeling that it could have happened yesterday, as opposed to most museums which are bustling with tourists and contain cold, glassed-off exhibits.




After a few minutes we jumped in the van again and were taken down to the border. There are seven buildings across the border, which is marked by a line running down their centre. Meetings are usually held in the middle building, the South Koreans and Americans sitting in South Korea, and the North Koreans in North Korea. I got the cheery lieutenant-colonel to shake my hand across the line. In this photo I’m actually in South Korea. Again, it was quite an incredible feeling, standing in the negotiation room for an ongoing conflict, grinning like an idiot and shaking the hand of a man who expects to fight against my country’s allies at any moment.


I'm in the South, he's in the North

The building on the South Korean side is covered in cameras and listening devices. I’m not sure what they expect to see or hear. I don’t think the North Koreans are going to carry out top-secret meetings right next to the border. On the South side, some American tour guides claim that the building on the North side is a façade, only a couple of metres thick. I can tell you personally that it’s about twenty metres thick, and made of solid marble, as I climbed the stairs and wandered around the balcony on the top when I was there.
In the 1980’s the South Koreans built a flag pole about 100m tall near the border. So the North Koreans built one 50m taller (the tallest in the world – 157.5m).


The South as viewed from the North

We spent the afternoon looking at some ancient Korean tombs and palaces, and then headed back up to Pyongyang the next morning. After seeing the DMZ and all the faintly ridiculous propaganda put out by both sides, I was looking forward to the Korean War Museum.

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North Korea - Part 3

By the next morning I had relaxed again, and appropriately enough we were visiting the fun-fair to go on a ride known as the Wheel of Death.

The wheel of death is a large spinning wheel, where the occupants sit around the outside facing the middle, and the whole wheel tips up in the air. The reason it's called the wheel of death is that the operator has a lever which he cranks up and down which in turn causes the top of the wheel to jolt up and down, the objective being to try to throw said occupants off the wheel.
Yes, this is incredibly dangerous.
It's the only fun-fair ride I've ever been on where the operator actively tries to kill you.


The wheel of death.

While we were watching, a middle-aged man and a kid came loose. The kid managed to grab onto someone's leg, but the man went flying across to the other side and landed on a couple of people. When it came to our turn, I decided that the best strategy was to hold on to the bar behind you with your hands, and let your legs fly up in the air. I managed to do this pretty well, although I mis-timed it once and hit my shoulder on the wooden seat which left a bruise for a couple of weeks. The tour guide refuses to go on it ever since he cracked his head on the metal bar and was concussed.

After the fun fair we went into the square next to the Arch of Triumph, where some people were doing group dancing. This involves groups of one hundred or so people doing simple choreographed moves in a circular pattern. There were about two thousand people in the square, and our tour guide eagerly threw each of us at a korean girl (or guy for the women in the group) and away we went. We were pretty hopeless but the koreans didn't mind us stepping on them or turning the wrong way, a good thing since it happened a lot.
This kind of mass choreography is very common as an after work activity. It's part of the mechanism of population control, but it's also a social event, and everyone seemed to be relaxed enough and enjoying themselves.


Group dancing

Every year North Korea has an enormous two week event called the Mass Games which involves a couple of hundred thousand performers in a stadium holding a hundred and forty thousand spectators, the largest in the world. Everywhere we went we would see people practicing for the Mass Games. There are also a number of smaller parades celebrating various foundation days. A few days after the nuclear test the BBC reported "an ominous parade" in Pyongyang of "unknown significance". The event was the celebration of the Down with the Imperialists Union Foundation Day, an annual light parade. Amusing but hardly ominous.

I had watched a BBC documentary before going to the North called Axis to Evil. It’s one of the better documentaries about North Korea, but is still riddled with falsities and hyperbole. The film crew were only allowed to travel at night, and thus assumed that there must be horrors that could only be passed under the cover of darkness.
Firstly, anything that can be seen during the day time on the ground can also be seen from a satellite, so this makes little sense. Secondly, while I was there we traveled a total of about 500km through the countryside without seeing anything particularly disturbing. If anything it would be easy to be lulled into a false sense of the relaxed nature of North Korean life. On the trip from Pyongyang to Wusan, on the east coast, we passed broken down trucks shared by civilians and soldiers, people sleeping on the side of the road, and peasants idly chatting in the shade of trees.

This is the fundamental problem with communism. No one has a personal vested interest in the results of their work so no one does much work. This simple difference of attitude accounts for the enormous difference in economic productivity between a starving under-developed nation and the world’s richest countries.



During the famine in the mid-nineties, the government authorised peasants to keep a small plot of land about the size of a bedroom for their own subsistence. Everywhere we went in the North Korean countryside we saw these plots full of high nutrient vegetables in front of houses. Farmers are allowed to sell any extra produce in a market, although this usually isn’t very much and they cannot purchase more land. Still, it is an implicit admission by the government of the superiority of the capitalist system. China made a similar admission a few decades ago and is now a booming capitalist machine. Hopefully North Korea will someday follow the same path.


Everywhere we went in Wusan, people would stare at us like aliens, obviously having had very little contact with white people, and then catch themselves and look at the ground or busily at whatever they were doing. The main purpose of the trip to Wusan was to visit the model farm. A small collection of buildings were flanked by green fields of rice and wheat, and an orchard of persimmon trees. On a central building was a mosaic of Kim Il Sung, with the words printed in bold red lettering that we saw on hillsides and prominent buildings everywhere we went.
“The great leader Kim Il Sung will always be with us”.
Above his picture, a pair of crackly loudspeakers blared out adulatory tales about the significant events in his life, interspersed with martial music and songs of his heroics. Apparently all the state farms throughout the country have a similar set up.
It must be incredibly annoying to have to listen to this racket all day and still try to get some work done.


The model farm

The local guide showed us around and gave us some quite fantastic stories, which our group guide strained to translate above the noise of the loudspeakers.
Supposedly Kim Il Sung visited the farm at some stage and asked the peasants there how many persimmons were on a tree. The peasants replied that there were about 500. He said that actually there were 800. When he had left, they counted and in fact there were 803. Now, the trees each yield about 5,000 persimmons.
It seems quite ridiculous to stand next to tree that clearly has only a handful of persimmons and claim that it has a yield of 5,000.

As we’d come down the road toward the farm, people on either side had given us the alien stare. But the attitude of peasants walking around the model farm was quite different. They appeared to be oblivious to our presence, in my opinion quite deliberately. At one point while our guide spouted more unlikely statistics, a man with an ox and cart stopped to casually talk to a woman, such that the bountiful harvest on the back of his cart was on full display to us.

We went into a house and I waited till everyone had left to get a look at the computer in the corner. It was a very dusty HP, probably built in the late 80s. The lady who owned the house walked in to find me peering at it and indicated that I should leave. I tried miming to ask if I could turn on the computer, but she politely shushed me towards the door. I doubt if it’s ever been switched on.


The computer and a little friend I made who was playing in its shelving

When we got back from Wusan, most of the group went on a helicopter to Mount Paekdu, and the other four of us traveled down to the thin strip of land that separates the South from the North. Probably the most dangerous place in North Korea and one of the most heavily militarized places in the world, it’s known (ironically) as the demilitarized zone.

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