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Newsletters
Koryo Quarterly – February/March 2007
OVERVIEW
Tours update
- Tourism season 2007 up and running,
- First tour report
- What we have to offer this year
- Mass Games? On or Off?
- Update for Americans (précis:
still no news)
- Turkmenistan, New President, New Tours
Crossing the Line
- Sundance Film Festival
- Berlin Film Festival
- in the news and forthcoming events
Koryo Tours events
- New office location, don’t get lost on your way
in!
- ‘Welcome to Pyongyang’ book launched
- other events
Other news
- Sanctions against North Korea, no more Ipods!
- Too good to be
true? Agreement reached on Northern Nukes
- Turkmenistan update;
the President is dead! Long live the President!
| In Pyongyang dancing on the square... |
...meanwhile in Turkmenistan Simon Cockerell casts his ballot |
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FULL TEXT
Tours update
The first group tour of the year saw 18 of us heading to chilly
Pyongyang to celebrate the birthday of the Dear Leader. We arrived
3 days before but already the city was gearing up for the big
day with red lanterns being strung up, huge pictures of Kimjongilia,
2.16 all over the place and clusters of flags everywhere. The
rain that we were greeted by as we arrive at the airport luckily
only lasted that one day and the rest of the time was beautiful
and sunny. The Yanggakdo hotel was a little fuller than usual
as many people from Friendship groups etc had been invited to
Pyongyang for the celebrations.
There were a number of special events to mark the occasion – in
the morning we attended the 16th Paektusan Prize International
Figure Skating Festival. Participants came from China, Belarus,
Switzerland, Uzbekistan, France and several of DPRK’s
top skaters also performed.
In the afternoon we went to Kim Il Sung square where a mass
dance was being held – a sea of men in smart suits and
women wearing traditional Korean dresses in every colour under
the sun. Our guides were a bit hesitant at first to allow us
to get too close but after a while we found ourselves right in
the midst of it and some of us even joined in – not too
sure what the Koreans thought of the foreigners’ dancing
skills but we certainly provided entertainment for them.
Along with the rest of Pyongyang we paid a visit to the Kimjongilia
Flower Exhibition – a botanist we had on the trip thought
he had dies and gone to heaven! Two floors full of the red begonia,
most of them arranged as displays of Jong Il Peak – the
birthplace of Kim Jong Il.
All in all it was a great first trip of the year – a lovely
group of tourists, fantastic guides, interesting things to see
and do and a great atmosphere in Pyongyang. We didn’t
actually see any practice for the mass games but I was
assured this was
because it was both too cold and people were busy preparing
for the birthday. All the people we spoke too are optimistic
that
they will be held in April and again in the summer.
| As if the February tour was not cold enough...we attended the childrens perfromance on ice |
Emily from Koryo Tours in Pyongyang after her first flight ever |
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- So with everything up and running for this year’s
trips we’d just like to shamelessly plug ourselves
(it is our newsletter after all!) by asking you to check
out the
tours we have for 2007 go to http://www.koryogroup.com/tours/index.html to check out what we have planned for the year ahead,
hope you can join us.
- The Big Event planned for 2007 is
the Arirang Mass Games, basically the world’s most
spectacular event, staged every few years in the world’s
largest stadium; the May Day Stadium in Pyongyang. Provisionally
this event is
scheduled to take place
in April for a few days and between August 15th and October
10th this year, we are still waiting for final confirmation
of this
info but as Hannah noted in her tour review, the practice
sessions have begun so it all looks very likely, make
sure you’re
signed up for this newsletter if you want to know as
soon as it is all declared.
- The last time that Arirang
Mass Games took place US citizens were permitted into
DPRK to be there for it, a rare and
unique opportunity. We are hopeful that the same will be true this time
round (more likely in August – October than in
April we think). Again confirmation is slow in coming
but we
will keep
you informed if you are on our list, hopefully the positive
result of the latest round of six party talks in Beijing
(see below
for more details) will help this decision to be made
in a positive way.
- Turkmenistan tours – Our schedule
for the year can be found at LINK please see below for
a report on how things
are
changing
there after the death of their very own Great Leader,
a time of transition makes for a perfect time for a unique
trip.
We are pleased to announce the release of a new photography book that we have been working on for the past couple of years; ‘Welcome to Pyongyang’ by British photographer Charlie Crane with an introduction by Nicholas Bonner and captions to the pictures by various KITC guides was published in mid-February by Chris Boot Publishing of the UK. The book can be purchased from our office in Beijing as well as through your local mega-bookshop; Waterstones, Borders, WHSmiths, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc, etc. perfect for a coffee-tables of all sizes and colours and far and away the best book of photography of North Korea on the market.
ISBN 1-905712-04-9 |
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Crossing the Line- view the film on BBC4, March 22nd
- Please take the time to check out the website for our
newest film ‘Crossing the Line’ www.comradejoe.com
- CTL had its world premiere late last year at the Pusan film
festival in South Korea where it was the most talked-about film
and went
down very well, -reviews on the website.
- The film
was in competition at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, USA
in January this year, one of the world’s largest and
most prestigious film festivals Sundance takes place annually
in the resort town of Park City, just outside Salt Lake City.
The
film competed with 9 other movies in the international documentary
category (more than 1600 films were initially entered for this
category) and although it didn’t win the big prize we still
managed to sell out all 5 screenings of the film. Nicholas Bonner
and Simon Cockerell of Koryo Tours as well as the Director of
the film Dan Gordon attended the festival, an interview which
Nick
and Dan had with CBS’ 60 Minutes Bob SImons can be found here http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2405878n,
- as yet the footage of Nick snowboarding at the Park City Mountain resort has not been released to the public
- Next stop for Crossing the Line was Berlin, One of Europe’s biggest festivals the film screened out of competition and was very well received, one report can be found at
- http://news.scotsman.com/latest_entertainment.cfm?id=259702007 . Nick Bonner and Dan Gordon were again in attendance.
- So what’s next? Well largely that’s up to the companies that bought the film for distribution in the various territories, but we will soon be organising some screening and talk dates in Beijing and hopefully in other cities in the region soon so get yourself on our mailing list if you want to come along to one of those, stay tuned to our newsletter and the CTL website www.comradejoe.com
Koryo Tours events
- The big news for Koryo Tours in the new year (apart
from swanning around in Utah schmoozing with celebrities and
working on our snow-blindness) is that we have moved office,
no longer are we based at the Red House Hotel in Beijing, our
home for the last 8 years, now we are about 10 minutes walk from
there, next to Ya Xiu market, a map to our new location can be
found at http://www.koryogroup.com/images/new-office-map.JPG and all telephone numbers, fax numbers, and email addresses remain
the same. Please feel free to pop by if you’re in the area,
and yes we still have the pool table!
Other news
- Koryo Tours office party on Thursday march 15th
- Leave the Jetskis at home - As you may have heard, as
a response to North Korea’s nuclear weapons test of October
9th last year the international community pledged a more robust
and targeted sanctions regime than had previously been in place;
each country created a list of products and services to restrict
and the range is quite considerable; Japan placed emphasis on
restricting the sending of funds from Korean residents in Japan
to DPRK as
well as closing their waters and ports to DPRK ships and scaling
back proposed aid packages, while the US took aim at the luxury
good market by listing Ipods, TVs above 29 inches, Segways, and
luxury liquors among its embargoed items, expect the collapse
of the country any day now due to the DPRK’s presumably
enormous Segway fleet being unable to obtain spare parts!
- Panic
over! Back to Defcon 4 - looks like the Six-Party talks in
Beijing may finally have come to a worthwhile and acceptable
agreement after several sessions and more than 2 years of negotiations. Of
course there is still plenty of time and opportunity for it
all to fall apart but it looks like the negotiators hammered
out
the following details;
1. The DPRK will shut down and seal the Yongbyon nuclear facility,
and invite back IAEA inspectors
2. The DPRK will declare the full extent of its nuclear capabilities,
civil and military
3. The DPRK and the US will start bilateral talks aimed at moving
toward full diplomatic relations
4. The DPRK and Japan will start bilateral talks aimed at taking
steps to normalize their relations
5. 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil to be delivered to the DPRK within
60 days. Increasing to 1 million tons per year afterwards.
6. 5 working group have been established to move towards resolution
of the following issues;
1. Denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula
2. Normalization of DPRK-US relations
3. Normalization of DPRK-Japan relations
4. Economy and Energy Cooperation
5. Northeast Asia Peace and Security Mechanism
- The full Joint statement can be found here http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/07013Statement.html
- Should’ve made himself President for Eternity – Sapamurat
Niyazov, the Turkmenbashi (leader of all Turkmen) died of heart
failure on December 21st last year leading to much speculation
over what would become of Turkmenistan following his demise
(he has been in charge since 1985 and is the only leader independent
Turkmenistan has ever had). Now that the dust has settled somewhat
it seems clear that the country is not in the process of unravelling
and a somewhat rubber-stampy election on Feb 11th unsurprisingly
installed Gurbanguly BerdyMuhammedov as President (expect President
Bush to refer to him as ‘Birdy’ if they ever meet),
the new President (who trounced his 5 opponents recording a
slightly suspect 89.23% of the vote) is expected to maintain
his election
pledges of slight liberalisation in certain areas of society
(Opera has apparently been on TV for the first time since Niyazov
decided
it was ‘Un-Turkmen’, and the first internet café has
already opened in the capital, Ashgabat) so there is some
optimism about the future but no major changes are expected
anytime
soon.
- We have tours scheduled for trips to Turkmenistan this
year in May and November please see www.koryogroup.com/turkmenistan for
more details, it is certainly an interesting time to be there,
the biggest transition since the end of Soviet rule is underway
and you don’t want to miss out on the chance to see the
revolving gold statue of the recently-deceased Turkmenbashi,
the new President
just doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to have such an
effigy built of himself. A real chance to see what reforms
are taking
place and how they manifest themselves, don’t miss out!
(note that unlike DPRK, US citizens are free to travel to Turkmenistan)
THANK YOU FOR READING THIS NEWSLETTER – PLEASE PASS
ON THE LINK AND OF COURSE WE WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS!
Nick, Hannah, Simon and Emily at Koryo Tours.
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