As word breaks on Tuesday 12th June 2018, the two leaders have announced to the world a commitment to these aims. In many symbolic and headline-worthy pictures, the leaders are seen shaking hands and seemingly sincere announcements of ‘new US-DPRK relations’.
Photo: eNCA
Yet amid the fanfare, the accordance seems thin on the ground with the specifics of how these plans will be achieved. Our panel speculated and analysed the motives and outcomes of these talks.
Speakers: (left to right) Gideon Rachman, Dr John Nilsson-Wright, Jihyun Park, Kimberley Leonard
Opening up the discussion was chair Kimberley Leonard, World News anchor for Sky News. Asking both Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times and Dr John Nilsson-Wright, (senior research fellow for the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House, senior university lecturer in Japanese Politics and International Relations at Cambridge University and an official fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge) how did they feel about this meeting taking place at all? There was consensus in the room that talking is better than inaction in order to bring about some form of security in the region. Both speakers expressed their worry was the lack of preparation from the American side. President Trump; the ‘great deal maker’ himself said there was not much need for extensive preparation for this meeting. On the other side, Kim Jong-un, widely seen as a very effective PR man, appeared to have prepared in great detail for this day.
Dr Nilsson-Wright raised the question, what counts as a win on both sides? For Kim Jong-un simply showing up, meeting the most powerful man in the world was indeed a win. The stakes were higher on the US side, as there was public pressure for Trump to bring about something substantial, and deliver something no other President has achieved ahead of the US mid-terms.
Yet there was some disagreement between the audience and the panel. Leonard asked is the meeting itself the message? Rachman argued there is a lot more on the table to discuss than a simple PR stunt. Comparisons were made to the meeting in Beijing 1972 between Chairman Mao and President Nixon. China-US relations had been frosty for many decades, so the visuals from this event were enough to mark it a success. However, objections in the audience may well have been right. If we view the realities of the agreement today, the most important message to people all over the world is the handshake in front of the two countries’ flags. The agreement is stubbornly vague.
Critics might say however the outcome today was always going to be the case. Real peace will have a longer gestation period, after trust between the two countries has been built.
We’ve heard from foreign commentators for weeks now, in the run up to this summit. But rarely do we get to hear from North Koreans themselves. Jihyun Park is a North Korean refugee who has resettled in the UK. She is the North Korean Outreach and Project Officer at the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea. She gave the panel invaluable insight into the realities of the regime. When Park first saw the meeting between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un in April 2018, her first reaction was anger. She was angry that Kim Jong-un could step so easily across the border, when for millions of North Koreans this is an impossible dream.
While Park was hopeful for this meeting, perhaps her expectations did not reach up to reality. She stressed her hope that these talks could lift more of the sanctions imposed on North Korea. Trump, she stressed, is the only world leader that talks of the North Korean people and not just their weapons program and that gives them hope. Yet Trump did not raise the issue of human rights in the summit today. The message she wanted the audience to take home is that we should not forget who the real casualties in these political cat-and-mouse games are. Having survived a North Korean labour camp and escaping from the country twice; Park knows the real dangers of the totalitarian regime. We should not be deceived by Kim’s PR stunts.
Members of the audience widened the scope of the talk. Questions around Russia were raised, what would Putin like to see happen from these talks? Rachman pondered Putin would like to see at least acknowledgment from either side of their involvement in the region. This falls in line with Russia’s determination to be seen as a global power by the West rather than a regional one. Dr Nilsson-Wright brought up in fact China is the nation that should be more concerned by these talks, being the neighbour of North Korea, it had high stakes for these two leaders to be left in a room alone together.
The panel discussed the potential for world leaders, when left in a room alone together, to overcommit and over-promise to deals of peace in the heat of the moment. That has not been the case in Singapore. Commitments remain vague, and more negotiations are needed to clarify what the real meaning of denuclearisation means for both nations.
Watch the full talk here.
]]>In a strange turn of events, now it seems the meeting is back on track for June 12th. Trump left a channel of diplomatic communication between the two nations following his open letter. A US delegation arrived in North Korea on Sunday 27th May for preparatory talks. The US has stated preparations for the talks continue to go well.
The world is poised to see how talks between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un play out, if at all. There are some who believe Trump has badly misunderstood his counter-part, as North Korea has made plain there will be no attempts to denuclearise at all, unless there is a unilateral agreement. The Trump administration is thin on foreign policy experts, leaving planning to Mike Pompeo and the hawkish John Bolton, who has repeatedly advocated for regime change in Pyongyang. In such an unpredictable climate, what can realistically be achieved from this summit? What can we say about this huge world story if the talks are cancelled again? And further, how much can we really know what’s going on in the minds of these two world leaders?
Chair
Kimberley Leonard
Kimberley Leonard is the World News anchor on Sky News. Based in London, she has over 15 years of international experience, working as an anchor, reporter and producer for some of the world’s leading news channels. In the last two years, Kimberley has covered the ongoing tension on the Korean Peninsula, most recently leading Sky’s live coverage of the historic summit between Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-In in the DMZ. A native Kenyan, Kimberley spent nearly a decade working in the Gulf before moving to the UK in 2015.
Speakers
Jihyun Park
Jihyun Park is a North Korean refugee who has settled in the UK. She is the North Koran Outreach and Project Officer at the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea. She manages the Korean-language output, builds relations with North Korean refugees, and oversees all projects for the program. She holds a Mathematics and Science degree from a university in North Korea. Prior to leaving North Korea, she was a teacher in a high school. She gave testimony of her experiences at the UN Commission of Inquiry’s London hearings. Her story has featured in a high-profile Amnesty International campaign, various magazines and newspapers, and in two short documentaries.
Gideon Rachman
Gideon Rachman is chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times. Before this, he was Asia editor at the Economist including spells as a foreign correspondent in Washington, Brussels and Bangkok. His particular interests include American foreign policy, the European Union, and globalisation.
Dr John Nilsson-Wright
Dr John Nilsson-Wright is senior research fellow for northeast Asia with the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House, senior university lecturer in Japanese Politics and International Relations at Cambridge University and an official fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. He was head of the Chatham House Asia Programme from March 2014 until October 2016. He comments regularly for the global media on the international relations of East Asia, with particular reference to Japan and the Korean peninsula.
]]>The film introduces us to two defectors – 26 year old Eunhee Park and 25-year old Suuyeoung Lee, who is about to make her first appearance on the show. Both escaped with the help of smugglers who charged about 7,000 US dollars to take the women on a terrifying journey across the border into China and eventually to Thailand, from where they could reach South Korea. The Chinese authorities arrest defectors and send them back, where they can face execution.
These women’s intimate stories paint a picture of a country where communism is being supplemented by a North Korean version of capitalism, with entrepreneurs making money by selling goods from China on the black market. As many men work for the government, black market enterprises are run by women – which perhaps explains why over 70 per cent of those with the money and contacts needed to escape from the North are women.
Reporter: Seyi Rhodes
Producer/Director: Kate Hardie-Buckley
Series Editors: Monica Garnsey & Hugo Ward
A Quicksilver Media production
Speakers:
Chaired by series producer Hugo Ward
Kate Hardie-Buckley is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker.
Paul French is an author and widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international and bestseller Midnight in Peking.
John Everard is former British Ambassador to North Korea and author of Only Beautiful, Please: A British Diplomat in North Korea
]]>On Friday 20 November, the Frontline Club hosted a premiere screening of the documentary I Am Sun Mu, a remarkable insight into the life and work of North Korean defector and political pop artist Sun Mu. The film follows Sun Mu as he prepares for his first solo exhibition in Beijing in 2014 while trying to remain hidden from the Chinese authorities – a feat that proves more challenging than he, or the filmmaker, had anticipated. The screening was followed by a Q&A session with director Adam Sjöberg.
The documentary is peppered with Sun Mu’s work, from rosy-cheeked North and South Korean children running through a pastel-lit field to a grotesque portrait of Kim Jong Il posing in a bubblegum pink tracksuit. The artist recalls life under the regime, and the subsequent paranoia of living in hiding, over bold animation sequences that become an essential part of the storytelling process.
#I AM SUN MU by #AdamSjöberg screened @frontlineclub! Powerful Documentary abt North Korean defector turned artist. pic.twitter.com/546OhzIxmf
— Mica Shibata (@Micabubby) November 21, 2015
Sjöberg began the discussion by answering a question on how he originally approached Sun Mu, particularly given the artist’s objection to revealing his true identity in fear that it would endanger the family that he left behind in North Korea over a decade ago.
Sjöberg explained that he met Sun Mu through the organisation Liberty in North Korea. “Over a relatively short amount of time, he grew to trust me… That was in 2013, and it was about a year later that I found the hook to pin the story to, which was the exhibit in Beijing.”
“As far as I know, no other North Korean has had a solo exhibit in Beijing that was not sanctioned by the North Korean government. So going into this exhibit, we already knew that it was going to be a relatively historic moment for North Koreans.”
Sjöberg later commented on the Korean conflict, saying that working with Sun Mu “helped solidify for me that change is going to happen on the peninsula… There’s a lot to overcome, but change is going to happen by people thinking differently about this issue and not toeing the party line because clearly that hasn’t been working for 60 years.”He said: “I was really interested in Sun Mu as a person because he talks about his divided heart. He creates images that are offensive to South Koreans as well. He’s creating images both of hope, but also images that are supposed to make you feel conflicted.”
When asked about how the animated sequences in the film were incorporated into the film, Sjöberg said: “Very early on, I had the idea of using animation to bring his paintings to life. My animator actually flew to Seoul and worked with Sun Mu to create the plates. The sketches were all inspired by actual sketches that we had him recreate for us, frame by frame.”
One audience member asked Sjöberg if he had been worried about footage from the exhibition being confiscated by Chinese authorities.
He responded saying that the curator from Yuan Art Museum, where the exhibition was being held, had actually expected it to be shut down by the authorities within 48 hours. “It was always known that this was not going to be an exhibit that lasted very long.”
Sjöberg also added that, “when the police started showing up, it became clear that things were a lot more serious than we thought. We had to scramble to make do, and be as safe as we could.”
Within hours of the exhibit being shut down by Chinese authorities, Sun Mu left the country. However, his work is yet to be returned to his studio in South Korea.
Sjöberg explained: “The concern is, will they make it out of China. That was his livelihood for the next year and a half. Luckily Liberty in North Korea has been great in supporting him, but that was an enormous body of work that is stuck in limbo.”
Information about I Am Sun Mu and upcoming screenings can be found on the film’s website and Twitter page.
]]>This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Adam Sjöberg.
I Am Sun Mu documents the life and work of North Korean defector and pop artist ‘Sun Mu.’ In North Korea, Sun Mu was a prolific propaganda artist for Kim Jong-un’s regime. After swimming to safety and beginning a new life in South Korea, Sun Mu turned his skills against the North Korean regime, satirising those who he once worshipped.
Sun Mu means ‘no lines’ or ‘no boundaries’ in Korean and became the political pop artist’s pseudonym as he rose to visibility. With the Chinese government keeping a close eye on him and the threat of execution looming over his head, Sun Mu is forced to conceal his face and name out of fear for the safety of those he left behind.
His artwork is brightly coloured and bold, but the price for creating political paintings could be fatal. During an exhibition in Beijing, Sun Mu’s friends and family find themselves in danger. Meanwhile, Chinese and North Korean authorities surround the exhibition, banning anybody from entering the space. Artists are interrogated and Sun Mu is forced to once again flee for safety in South Korea.
Gaining remarkable access to a notorious figure who must carefully guard his identity, director Adam Sjöberg brings us into a private world, revealing the stakes involved in countering the North Korean regime.
I Am Sun Mu had its UK Premiere at the 2015 Raindance Film Festival.
Directed by: Adam Sjöberg
Runtime: 86’
Country: South Korea/United States/China
On Thursday 2 July, Hyeonseo Lee joined an audience at the Frontline Club for a discussion on her experiences as a North Korean defector. Lee, an international campaigner for North Korean human rights and refugee issues, was joined in conversation by author Paul French.
One day after dinner, seventeen-year-old Lee told her parents that she was going to visit a neighbour. “Make sure you’re home before dark,” her mother said at the door. She promised not to be back late and turned to leave her house forever.
The young Lee headed for the neon lights of China that had long beckoned her from across the border. Here she discovered the inevitable loneliness of life as a fugitive, constantly terrified of being uncovered and drifting from her sense of self with every false name she adopted.
“I had to change my name constantly to protect my identity, so I became the girl with seven names,” she said at the start of the talk.
Great talking with @HyeonseoLeeNK @frontlineclub last night pic.twitter.com/HhWvXj7wW7
— Paul French (@StateofParanoia) July 3, 2015
French, an analyst and commentator on Asia, invited Lee to elaborate on points she had mentioned in her memoir The Girl with Seven Names.
He asked about the recurrent theme of superstition, which punctuates much of the book: “Your mother takes you several times to see a fortune teller to try and work out everything from whether or not this boy will be a good marriage or bad marriage, to if you’re going to leave the country what day should you go on.”
French said he was interested in understanding the role of superstition in an atheistic, communist regime.
Lee responded: “People have nothing to rely on so they really, severely rely on the fortune teller,” she laughed. “I even went to see a fortune teller a few months ago.”
As a young girl, a fortune teller predicted that Lee would escape from North Korea, stating, “you will eat the foreign country rice.” Yet even then she only imagined that she would live in a different area of the country – never abroad. She said that the reason North Korea is a “collapsed country” is because Kim Jong-Il believed his own fortune teller too much.
The conversation moved onto the perceived supremacy of the Kim dynasty. Lee admitted that she always believed the leaders to be Gods: “We didn’t consider them as normal human beings” she said. “Until I was fourteen, I thought Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il don’t go to the bathroom and that they killed the enemies when they were five or six years old.”
She expressed amazement at her previous naivety, but defended her beliefs and those still held by her compatriots: “From the moment you are born you are brainwashed severely, even though it’s all a lie, if you hear it every day, every minute, it becomes the truth.”
When Kim Jong-il died, everyone knew that they had to cry or risk dangerous consequences, and “many people really cried with their hearts.” Yet some citizens were sent to prison camps for crying too little, and others for crying too much and appearing insincere.
As well as growing up to a drumbeat of propaganda asserting the Kim family’s godly status, Lee also learned from an early age not to trust anyone. Her mother used to tell her that ‘the walls have ears and the fields have eyes,’ and politics was very rarely spoken about at home.
“Even husband and wife can’t trust each other,” she said.
Her mother was spied on for six years by someone she considered to be her best friend. One day, sick with guilt, the woman spy admitted that she had been reporting to the government on all her actions. Lee said that this kind of betrayal was “everyone’s experience in North Korea.”
Spying and duplicity extended beyond the borders of her country and into China, where new ‘friends’ reported her to the police as a North Korean defector. Lee was forced to lie to her roommate in Shanghai, who years later texted her saying, “I didn’t know you were a defector – I just saw your Ted Talk!”
Lee now lives in Seoul with her mother and brother, whom she helped escape North Korea thirteen years after her own flight. She is married to an American man called Brian.
“My mum was the most brainwashed woman. When I introduced my boyfriend to her she really treated him as an ‘American bastard’. In North Korea, we didn’t learn that Americans were human beings, we just had one word: American-bastards.”
Growing up in North Korea, she was taught that all men from the US had long noses and dressed in military clothes, while the British were always portrayed as gentlemen in tall black hats and capes. Relieved, she said that her mother now accepts the “American-bastard” as a son.
Click here for more information on The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story.
]]>Hyeonseo Lee was just seventeen when she fled North Korea. She found herself in China, alone and with no identity. Her mother’s first words over the telephone to her lost daughter were “Don’t come back”.
In her memoir The Girl with Seven Names, Lee recounts her life inside the secretive and brutal communist regime: the ‘self-criticism’ classes in primary school; forcibly joining the Youth Corps aged nine; and witnessing public executions of people who had not mourned enough for the death of Kim Il-Sung. She describes her escape and brave efforts to persuade her mother and brother to join her.
We are pleased to welcome Hyeonseo Lee to the Frontline Club to share her insight into growing up North Korea, the story of her escape and how she went on to rebuild her life and discover her identity. She will be talking to Paul French, an author and a widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs. He is author of North Korea: State of Paranoia and the international bestseller Midnight in Peking.
Hyeonseo Lee lived in North Korea until her escape in 1997. She arrived in Seoul in 2008, where she currently lives, and has recently graduated from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. As a student, she was a Young Leader at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a journalist at the Ministry for Unification and a selected member of the ‘English for the Future’ programme at the British Embassy in Seoul. She is an international campaigner for North Korean human rights and refugee issues and speaks on the subject all over the world, including at the UN and the Oslo Freedom Forum.
PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL
]]>As the leadership in North Korea changes and Kim Jong-un takes the helm, a man who goes by the name of Dragon smuggles North Korean defectors across borders. His latest trip with two women, Sook-Ja and Yong-hee, takes an unexpected turn when they are left stranded in China. This is only the beginning of an extraordinary 5,000 km journey. Their story reflects the reality of tens of thousands of North Koreans currently in hiding in China.
Dragon sees himself as a human rights activist, whilst acknowledging that many people look poorly on brokers who charge defectors money for freedom. His work is illegal and his true motivations questionable, but many defectors come to him to seek an escape from China and a world of uncertainty. A North Korean defector himself, Dragon was once part of a commando unit that trained under then President Kim Jong-il. The experience has enabled him to assist hundreds of North Korean defectors.
Korean-Canadian filmmaker Ann Shin gains intimate access with these three individuals, taking the journey alongside them while filming undercover and navigating the risk of exposing the defectors and their guide. Beautifully shot, with a compelling high-stakes story, The Defector poses broad questions around human smuggling and the pursuit of freedom. The film has been selected for 20 international festivals and has been nominated for 7 awards, winning the Canadian Digi Awards and the FITC Awards.
Directed by Ann Shin
Duration: 71′
Year: 2014
www.thedefectormovie.com
The evening will include short stories capturing the essence of big issues, films showing life in other parts of the world under difficult or extraordinary circumstances, and stories focusing on one particular remarkable event or person.
Model Village
Hayoun Kwon is not allowed to film in the North Korean propaganda village, Kijong-dong, situated close to the border. In order to document her denied journey she builds a scale model and films it. The result testifies to the real state of the ghost village – a mechanism of fiction unattainable other than by imagination. Directed by Hayoun Kwon | Duration: 10′ | Year: 2014
Shipwreck
In October 2013, a boat carrying 500 Eritrean refugees sunk off the coast of the Italian island Lampedusa. More than 360 people drowned. Abraham, one of the survivors, walks through a graveyard of shipwrecks and vividly remembers the nightmarish experience. Meanwhile at the harbour, hundreds of coffins are being loaded onto a military ship. Directed by Morgan Knibbe | Duration: 14′ | Year: 2014
Winter
Winter is a portrait of a season – a journey through North Russia and Siberia, through the feelings and thoughts of the people who have to cope with one of the world’s harshest climates. Cristina Picchi captures a reality where the boundary between life and death is so thin that is sometimes almost nonexistent, where civilisation constantly both fights and embraces nature and its timeless rules and rites. Directed by Cristina Picchi | Duration: 12′ | Year: 2013
Autonomous
The boundaries between what is real and unreal are becoming increasingly blurred through technological advances. Is there a limit for what can be replaced? Autonomous is an intense, emotional look into a future that is already here. Directed by Per Eriksson and Alexander Rynéus | Duration: 14′ | Year: 2014
Down on the Corner
Beer, cigarettes or margarine, the corner store in Sirča has it all. It is also the meeting point of those who didn’t emigrate. For those who stayed, there is no work and no money, but a lot of humour and friendship. Down on the Corner captures everyday life in central Serbia. Directed by Nikola Ilić & Corina Schwingruber Ilić | Duration: 15′ | Year: 2013
In Guns We Trust
In Kennesaw, a small American town in the state of Georgia, a good citizen is an armed citizen. By law, since 1982, each head of household must own at least one working firearm with ammunition. Photographer and filmmaker Nicolas Lévesque takes the viewer on a stunning exploration of this town where the right to bear arms trumps every argument. Directed by Nicolas Lévesque | Duration: 12′ | Year: 2013
]]>
L-R: John Everard, Jang Jin-sung, Shirley Lee and Peter French.
Everard started the discussion by asking Jang if he thought North Korea has changed since he left, to which Jang replied through his translator, Shirley Lee, who is also an academic and editor of New International Focus, that the biggest change was the death of Kim Jong-il and the succession of his son, Kim Jong-un. Now living in South Korea, Jang founded the defector’s magazine New International Focus, but before he left, he lived a life of privilege and was the older Kim’s favourite poet.
“The single most important change is that the young man came into that leadership rather than grew into it [like his father]. On the surface, it looks like a Kim was ruling then and a Kim is ruling now, but what also happened was the elite structure that supported Kim Jong-il’s leadership has remained unchanged. Kim Jong-un is the avatar, is the icon off Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-sun, he is not a person, he is an image that we see.”
Everard asked French to explain his claim in his book that suggests there is a logical consistency to the way North Korea is acting. “This is a country that was threatened with nuclear annihilation,” French replied. Referring to their colonisation by Japan and the following Korean War, he added, “For all this theatrical victimhood of this period, [their behaviour] is sort of understandable. Kim Jong-sun is still considered by many who defected from the country as a great man. In the post-WWII period, he was a great nation builder. The idea in its totality is a compelling idea, but in its reality it becomes totally warped.”
An audience member asked the panel, “If the current regime collapses, who would be there to pick up the pieces?”
“The dirty little secret for all of us is reunification is not something we want,” said French. “Unfortunately because there are 22 million North Koreans, we can’t afford it. The division between North and the South has grown and grown and many young people in South Korea don’t want to take this on; they want to get a mortgage, buy a house and to do what everyone else does. Nobody needs this bill right now.”
When asked by an audience member, “What do you think North Koreans think about the outside?” Jang answered, “A lot of people rightly worry about the physical implications of collapse, and any change in the status quo in terms of economics, security and refugees. But I know how difficult it has been for me, a man who had full access to South Korean culture, and I still feel underage.”
“If we do not begin to think about the emotional cost of recovering the lost humanity of the North Korean people, no matter what happens at the top, no matter what leadership comes in, the people will not be ready to enjoy what they are entitled to.”
You can listen back or watch the event here:
]]>