Pyongyang, Mon Amour

I AM a friend of North Korea. Or rather, that’s what it probably says in my file in the North Korean ministry of foreign affairs. It happened like this. In 1992, as deputy minister for defense in Poland’s first democratically elected government, I received an invitation to North Korea’s embassy in Warsaw to celebrate the birthday of the Great Leader. Thinking that it would be my last chance to attend a Stalinist event, I went. The North Koreans were delighted to land such a “big fish.” And when I told the ambassador, truthfully, that they must not allow ideological slackness or they would end up like Poland, he positively glowed. A laudatory telegram must have gone to Pyongyang, for each time I subsequently met a North Korean diplomat, he told me I was a good egg, who respected them at a time when even so-called Communists turned their backs.

So, vibes were good when I went to Pyongyang on an official visit, this time as my country’s deputy foreign minister, almost ten years later. Rules are rules, though, and the North Korean diplomatic protocol informed us that cell phones could not be taken into the country (even though they don’t work there) and would be confiscated irrespective of rank. I left mine in that oasis of liberty, Beijing.

RS

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Radek Sikorski

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I AM a friend of North Korea. Or rather, that’s what it probably says in my file in the North Korean ministry of foreign affairs. It happened like this. In 1992, as deputy minister for defense in Poland’s first democratically elected government, I received an invitation to North Korea’s embassy in Warsaw to celebrate the birthday of the Great Leader. Thinking that it would be my last chance to attend a Stalinist event, I went. The North Koreans were delighted to land such a “big fish.” And when I told the ambassador, truthfully, that they must not allow ideological slackness or they would end up like Poland, he positively glowed. A laudatory telegram must have gone to Pyongyang, for each time I subsequently met a North Korean diplomat, he told me I was a good egg, who respected them at a time when even so-called Communists turned their backs.

So, vibes were good when I went to Pyongyang on an official visit, this time as my country’s deputy foreign minister, almost ten years later. Rules are rules, though, and the North Korean diplomatic protocol informed us that cell phones could not be taken into the country (even though they don’t work there) and would be confiscated irrespective of rank. I left mine in that oasis of liberty, Beijing.