North Korea and Our Visit: Can it be Justified?

Executions and Human Rights

Three months ago Lynne and I spent a week in North Korea. The blog had not been completed when this was first posted, but it has been subsequently. Links to all nine posts can be found at the end of this post.

The Death of Jang Sung Taek

The DPRK has been much in the news this week. Ten days ago Jang Sung Taek was vice-chairman of the National Defence Committee and the second most powerful man in the country. On the 8th of December he was dismissed from this and all his other posts and expelled from the Worker’s Party of Korea. His arrest at a Politburo meeting was shown on television and this was swiftly followed by his trial and execution.

Jang Sung Taek
(Copyright Yonhap News - I hope they don't mind)

What this tells us of the inner workings of the North Korean regime – other than that they are brutal – has been the subject of much speculation. South Korean news agencies were quick to link the death of Jang to the public executions of 80 petty criminals in November and of the execution of 11 members of the girl band Ponchobo Electronic Ensemble in August. ‘A new reign of terror,' some said, 'has started in North Korea.’

Oddly ‘pornography’ was alleged to be an issue in all three cases. The girl band had performed in a pornographic video, many of the petty criminals had been distributing pornography, while Jang had merely possessed pornographic photographs. I am unsure what this tells us about the North Korean psyche, but the thought crossed my mind that in a country where the most obscene act you can commit is to disrespect the leader, ‘pornography’ might not mean what we think it does.

Kim Jong Un
Is this 'pornography' in the DPRK?

Some of the reports of executions come from South Korean agencies whose reporting of the north has often been more sensational than accurate [see update at end]. That said, no one seriously doubts the execution of Jang Sung Taek. Writing in the Independent, John Everard, British ambassador to North Korea 2006-8, said: ‘North Koreans in the military will be particularly nervous. One of Jang’s alleged crimes was to plot a coup against Kim Jong-un, involving the military old guard…. I suspect that the complicity of such officers in the “plot” will now be investigated, and that some at least will be dismissed….or worse. I doubt that Jang will be the last person to die in this purge.’

North Korea: The Amnesty International View

On Sunday (15th Dec 2013) North Korean Prison Camps provided the basis of an Amnesty International double page advertisement in The Observer (and, for all I know, other Sunday newspapers). I have been unable to find a copy of the full text to link to, so I have scanned a couple of paragraphs. They form part of one of half a dozen case studies and are representative of the rest of the advertisement.

Extract from Amnesty International advertisement
The Observer, 15/12/13

Is it all true? Unlike some campaigning groups, Amnesty tends not to exaggerate. They say 100,000 people are being held while other sources claim up to 300,000. The case studies come from former inmates (and one former guard) who have been released or escaped and subsequently made their way to South Korea. The North Koreans, as Amnesty admits, ‘say the defectors are lying and flatly deny the existence of any camps.’ Amnesty funds satellite photography of the relevant area and say that not only do they exist, but some are being expanded. The ‘defectors’ have an axe to grind, and there are many in South Korea and beyond who are eager to believe anybody who tells them what they want to hear. On the other hand if just a fraction of what Amnesty describe actually happened, the camps rank with the worst the world has seen. We have been to Auschwitz (and I blogged about it here) and are scheduled to visit the Cambodian ‘Killing Fields’ in February [we did, you can read about it here]; I do not make these comparisons lightly.

Our Visit: Can it be Justified

Should we have gone to North Korea? We thought it through before we went, but the events of the past week have prompted a rethink.

We travel because we are curious, curious about the world and about the lives of our fellow human beings. North Korea is unique and thus uniquely attractive. ‘Terrible lies are told about our country,’ the guide told us just before we left. ‘You have seen the truth, now go home and tell people that truth.’ I think our guide really believed that, if we were fair-minded and honest, we would go home and tell of the 'Worker’s Paradise’ that is the DPRK. But it is not a worker's paradise.

By not going we would have had no effect, so to justify our visit we need only to show that our selfish urge to satisfy our curiosity did not, on balance, strengthen the regime. If, in some small way, we improved the situation, then that is even better, though the effect of two people - or our group of 15 - can only be tiny.

We were certainly milked for hard currency, €20 for Museum entrance, €100 for the Airarang Games, €2 for a small cup of luke-warm Nescafé (and Euros is the currency we were asked to pay in), so we helped finance the state. And against that….? There was little we could say to the guides, they seemed genuinely committed to a system which continually tells them it is the best there is. To convince them otherwise risks putting them in the prison camps whose existence they would deny, and I would not want that on my conscience. What we, and every other tourist, could do was show our open-mindedness and curiosity, qualities that are frowned on in the DPRK, and which, if they caught on, would inevitably undermine the regime. Travellers are the only contact relatively ordinary Koreans have with the outside world, the only access to another point of view. But was that enough? I do not know. From a selfish point of view I am glad I went (and equally glad I do not have to go again) and it would be hypocritical to urge others to make different choices, but I remain unsure as to whether we did more harm than good.

Update. The widely reported story that Kim had Jang Sung Taek torn apart by a pack of wild dogs originated from a satirical post on Weibo – China’s homegrown twitter service. It was picked up by a Hong Kong news agency and then went worldwide. It is extremely unlikely to have any basis in fact. North Korean executioners are known to favour the machine gun.

The North Korean Posts

Beijing to Pyongyang
Pyongyang (1): A Day for Bowing
Pyongyang (2): A Day for Waving
Panmunjom and the DMZ
Sariwon and Nampho
The Nampho Barrage and back to Pyongyang
Last Day in Pyongyang (1), Gifts and the Metro
Last Day in Pyongyang (2) Serious Study and Juche Thought
By Train out of the DPRK

Morridge and Onecote: Cowpat Walk No. 8

A Peak District Circular Walk: Abundant Mud and the Morridge-Mixon Anticline

Staffordshire

Staffordshire
Moorlands

In March, I started the Crowdecote (Cowpat 6) post with a grumble – aimed at myself as much as anybody. ‘In the days when we all worked,’ I wrote, ‘it was easy to know where people were on a Saturday and it was usually possible to choose one when most were free. Now that the majority of potential participants have retired it has become harder to find a Saturday when everybody is in the same country, or even on the same continent, never mind available.’

Cowpat 8, then, was a minor miracle; all six ‘regular’ participants walked – though not all at the same time. Francis, Alison and Brian were only available on the 23rd of November so formed the ‘Pioneer Group’, while Mike, Lee and I followed on the 30th. Both were days of bright (though not warm) November sunshine, though the intervening week featured grey skies and rain.

The approximate locations of the Peak District Cowpats

I asked the Pioneers for their comments. Alison’s can be paraphrased as ‘Moan. Moan. Moan. Moan. Moan, but overall it was a good experience.’ Alison is not normally so negative. I saw Brian and Francis on Friday evening. They offered some advice and then talked at length of mud, slurry and impending doom. Brian, in particular, seemed to relish our forthcoming discomfort.

Leek to Morridge Ridge

We made an early start and parked on Mount Road, a lane running along a ridge just outside Leek, shortly after 9 o’clock.

Lee (left) and Mike, Mount Road, Leek

We set off eastwards with fine views north to the Ramshaw Rocks, Hen Cloud and the Roaches.

Ramshaw Rocks on the right, Hen Cloud in the middle and the southern end of the Roaches just disappearing round the tree

The problem with starting on a ridge with the intention of climbing to a higher one is that first you must descend. We dropped into a valley with an apparently nameless brook at the bottom. The approach was muddy and dotted with molehills, but it is inappropriate to make a major issue out of these. The descent was tiresome; moderately steep, very slippery and made unnecessarily narrow by a barbed wire fence.

Lee descends to a nameless stream

Reaching the bottom, we crossed the footbridge and ascended the other side to Stile House Farm. We had climbed through a field which, though muddy and pockmarked by cattle, was still frozen so we skipped lightly over the top of the ground – insofar as I ever ‘skip lightly’. Beyond the farm we emerged into Norman Lamont’s fabled ‘sunlit uplands’, and Lee felt the need to shed some outer clothing.

The pockmarked frozen field below Stile House Farm

From here a swing left took us up to a barn, recently built and right across the path. New fences have been erected around it and an old stile led into an area from which there was no exit. The Pioneers had spent some time finding a way through, but we benefitted from their experience, following a farm track and climbing over a wooden fence.

There is no obvious path to Easing Farm....

Lee and Mike discuss the lack of obvious path to Easing Farm

....but we had to cross another brook, and after descending by what felt like the natural route, we arrived at a footbridge – though it might have been harder to find behind summer foliage.

Lee finds the footbridge

We climbed the bank beyond. There are missing stiles in this area, while others are blocked off by strands of barbed wire. We were just outside the Peak District National Park, where walkers are more carefully looked after, but the footpaths were on the map, so they will be regularly walked. If farmers do not like it, it is in their best interests not to be obstructive but to ensure that paths are clearly signed and stiles properly maintained, otherwise walkers will wander all over their land and could damage fences by climbing over them.

Climbing the bank to Easing Farm

We turned right up Easing Lane, leaving it after 400 metres to follow a field path up to Morridge, which is not a place, just a long ridge of elevated moorland. The right of way passes through a hollow where the main stream is joined by two others rising on the hillside to the right. Brian’s advice was to ignore the official route (there is no actual path) and go round to the right staying as high as possible.

A very wet hollow below Blakelow Lane

Good advice, but even so there were 100m where we could only proceed by hopping from tussock to tussock. The ground between was so soft it swallowed the bottom metre of my walking pole under its own weight. Had any of us had slipped off a tussock we might still be there.

We reached Blakelow Road which runs along Morridge Ridge some 40-50 below its summit, and crossed it into the National Park. The rest of our climb was up a farm track, gently inclined but lon enough to make arrival at the summit a relief.

Along the Mixon-Morridge Anticline

We had intended to pause here for coffee, but the track, which ends in a muddy parking place beside a phone mast, was covered in litter - plastic bottles and cans crushed ready for recycling but unaccountably dumped here.

Turning our backs on the high point of the ridge 1.5km the north and 15m higher than our 448m we headed south along the broad, wet, grassy top of what is technically called the Mixon-Morridge Anticline. An Anitcline (I had to llok it up!) is an archlike fold on the earths surface - the opposite of a syncline. Despite its grandiose name, it was not a pretty place, the muddy sheep fields were scarred by tractor tracks and the ridge was too broad and flat to give a good view into the Hamps Valley to our left.

Across the top of the Mixon-Morridge anticline

Here the temperature was several degrees lower and the breeze had a cutting edge. We eventually paused for coffee......

Pausing for coffee above Mixon

.... beside a frozen water trough..

Mike prefers his coffee on ice

We started to descend into the Hamps Valley, passing the dour old farmhouse at Mixon Grange. The path forks here, one branch descending sharply to an 18th century copper mine but we took the higher path continuing our gentle descent along the ridge.

Arriving at Mixon Grange

Views into the Hamps Valley began to open up and we could see the village of Onecote at the foot of the hill.

The Valley of the River Hamps

Descent to Onecote

Approaching Onecote Grange we stuck to the footpath across the field. The Pioneer Group, however, did not. Francis wrote ‘we make no apologies for following a metalled farm road down to Onecote Grange. Here, Brian made the mistake of walking on what looked like a flat hard standing but sunk in nearly to his knees in something much more smelly’.

There is a lesson here: if you do not follow the official right-of-way you end up in a slurry pit.

Lunch in the Jervis Arms, Onecote

We continued through Onecote to the Jervis Arms on the ‘main’ road (actually the B5053). The pub has a garden beside the River Hamps which is a pleasant spot to sup a pint in the summer months, if not November. Last week Brian crossed the garden to clean his gaiters in the river.

The Jervis Arms, Onecote

In the pub he washed his hands. Then he washed them again, but as he ate his sandwich the odour still lingered. On Friday evening he had been unsure if the slurry pit had been in Onecote or Mixon. Francis is sure it was Onecote, which is a shame as ‘Mixon’ is derived from the old English for ‘dung heap’.

The Jervis Arms, named after Admiral Jervis (a native of Stone and the victor at the Battle of Cape St Vincent - see Algarve (6) The West Coast) resembles many of the country pubs that have closed in recent years. It is, though, still open, probably because it offers well-kept, high quality beer and good food. I can vouch for the beer but, in several visits, I have never gone beyond the sandwich menu. Today’s ham sandwich (eaten with clean and fragrant fingers) involved good bread and ham freshly cut into satisfying slabs. My grandmother’s unfailing reaction to thinly sliced meat was to give it a look of disgust and say, ‘you can still taste the knife on that.’ Two generations on, I have different attitudes to many things, but on this issue Granny knew best.

Onecote to Hopping Head

Leaving the pub we walked back through Onecote village. The name – meaning ‘remote cottage’ - was first recorded in 1199. The population peaked at almost 600 in 1821 but is now nearer 200. We turned left, back towards the southern end of the ridge, beside St Luke's Church, a handsome building dating from 1750. Had we progressed a couple of hundred metres further up the lane we would have reached Onecote Lane End. A bitter and protracted legal dispute between members of the Cook family of Onecote Lane End Farm in the 1840s came to the attention of Charles Dickens who used it as the basis of ‘Jarndyce vs Jarndyce’ in Bleak House.

St Luke's Church, Onecote

Despite the vagueness of the signs and the missing field boundaries we safely navigated our way up onto the ridge at Hopping Head where we made the right hand turn the Pioneers missed. Francis explained that ‘the low angle [of the] sun straight at us made navigation tricky.’ After our early start we were over an hour ahead of them at this point and had no such problem.

Looking back into the Hamps Valley

Across the Flank of the Ridge Down to Stile House Farm

We re-joined Bleaklow Lane where there were fine views over the Valley of the River Churnet, and beyond that the River Dane with the gritstone cap of the Cloud (Cowpat 4) clearly visible.

Looking across the valleys of the Churnet and Dane with the gritstone cap of The Cloud centre picture.

We descended across the slope on well-marked paths with extant (though sometimes difficult) stiles…

Descending towards Stile House Farm

… approaching Stile House Farm from the southwest over ground thankfully much drier than we had encountered north of the farm.

Mike and Lee approach Stile House Farm

From here we retraced our morning route, down into the valley of the nameless brook and up onto the ridge on the far side, very much a sting in the tail.

Back down to that nameless brook, with the sting in the tail rising ahead

It had been a long walk, Brian had said, not in distance but in time, as every pace required the back foot to be wrestled from the mud’s grasp before it could be advanced. The Pioneers had finished in failing light. We started earlier, learned from their experiences and, by the sound of it, enjoyed a much pleasanter walk, finishing with almost an hour’s daylight left.

Approximate Distance: 15 Km

The Cowpats

1 Ironbridge Gorge

2 Eccleshall and Cop Mere

3 Swynnerton to Whitmore

4 Biddulph, The Cloud and Rushton Spencer

5 Shutlingsloe and Danebridge

6 Crowdecote
7 Scaling the Mighty Weaver Hills

 8 Morridge and Onecote
9 Codsall
10 The Roaches and Lud's Church

The Algarve: The West Coast

Along The Algarve's Wilder and Windier Edge

Portugal

The 130km of Portugal's (and the Algarve's) southern coast is a land of holiday villas and sun-kissed beaches where the season starts early and lingers long. October, far less crowded than July or August, can usually be relied upon for a succession of warm – occasionally hot - sunny days.

But the Algarve has a west coast too, 50km of it running northwards from Cape St Vincent. Mostly it is a nature reserve where the prevailing westerlies drive Atlantic breakers against the rocks. The beaches here are wilder and more remote, the haunt of seabirds and surfers - all the main beaches have their surf schools.

Surfers, Bordeira Beach, October 2013

We often spend a day on the west coast, this year in warm sunshine, but sometimes in biting wind. The information in this post is drawn from a number of trips, the first in 1982. The photographs, though, all come from the last eight years.

Cape St Vincent

Cape St Vincent is usually referred to as Europe’s most southwesterly point. Most southerly or northerly are well defined, but southwesterly is not; if you head SW and keep going you end up at the South Pole. Nearby Sagres is further South, Lisbon is further west, but a glance at the map suggests it would be pedantic to dispute Cape St Vincent’s romantic if strictly unverifiable claim.

Cape St Vincent, October 2009

The cape is a high windswept promontory. There is little there except a car park, a food van boasting the ‘last burger before America’, a lighthouse and the remains of a Capuchin Monastery. Relics of the martyred St Vincent were brought here in the 8th century, but were removed to Lisbon in 1173.The monastery survived the loss of its relics, the vandalism of Sir Francis Drake in 1597 and the great earthquake of 1755, but was no match for the suppression of the monasteries that followed the Liberal Revolution of 1820.

Looking up the west coast from Cape St Vincent. October 2009

Nine naval encounters between 1337 and 1833 carry the name Battle of Cape St Vincent. The biggest, in 1797, was a British victory over a Spanish fleet in the French Revolutionary War. The British fleet was commanded by Admiral Sir John Jervis who became the Earl of St Vincent for his troubles. Jervis (like this blog) was born near Stone in Staffordshire, where he is also buried.

Sagres and its Fortaleza

The shelf-like promontory of Sagres, October 2009

If Cape St Vincent is Portugal’s Land’s End, Sagres is The Lizard. Beyond the large village, which was established after the 1755 earthquake, is the Fortaleza. Cut off behind forbidding stone walls on a shelf-like promontory high above the Atlantic is the home of Henry the Navigator's school of navigation. Whether it was a 'school' in the academic sense or more akin to a 'school' of dolphins is debatable, but Vasco da Gama who pioneered the sea route to India (we met him in Cochin), Pedro Alvares Cabral who followed him to India, incidentally ‘discovering’ Brazil on the way – an eccentric piece of navigation - and Ferdinand Magellan, who led the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe, were all associated with it. Despite his sobriquet, Henry never navigated anything anywhere, but he was the instigator of these great journeys. When he died in 1460, Portuguese exploration's 'control centre' moved to Lisbon and Sagres returned to obscurity.

The Fortaleza, Sagres, October 2005

In 1982 we simply parked on the coastal scrub and walked into the fort. Now there is an elaborate road system, a large car park and an entrance fee. What you get though, is much the same; an old church, a huge compass rose and a lot of atmosphere. You can even stand by a cannon and gaze across the bay to Cape St Vincent (or stand with your back to it, as I am in the picture.)

Cape St Vincent across the bay from Sagres, October 2005

Vila do Bispo

8km North of Sagres is Vila do Bispo, the ancient capital of Portugal’s southwest corner and the placewhere the N-125 along the south coast meets the west coast N-268. When we first visited in 1982 the N-125 became smaller and bumpier the further west you travelled and Vila do Bispo was an isolated oasis of civilization crouched on a rocky plateau and surrounded by dilapidated windmills. Now the N-125 is a major road and as former hamlets like Budens and Raposeira sprout holiday villas by the hundred and the tentacles of development creep ever closer, that air of isolation is fading. A 1990’s Rough Guide to Portugal described Vila do Bispo as ‘…a pretty little town with a lovely old church … [where] … nothing much happens.’ Despite the encroaching villas, that description remains largely accurate.

Vila do Bispo, October 2013

Dilapidated windmills can be found throughout the Algarve, though particularly in the windy west. Most are just stumps of brick and although a few still have their sails none, as far as I know, are in working order. Now, after a century or so of neglect, wind power has become important again and wind turbines dot the landscape, harvesting the energy of the prevailing westerlies.

Wind turbines near Vila do Bispo, October 2013

A line of windswept beaches Aguia, Castelejo, Cordama and others are accessible from Vila do Bispo on roads some of which are tarmacked. We have been to Castelejo, and maybe others, I remember photographing the surf school, but that was in the days before digital cameras and despite rummaging in the cupboards, I can find no hard evidence.

Amado Beach, October 2005

Bordeira

Further north the beaches of Amado and Bordeira are also surfer’s beaches. They can be reached from the N-268 on sealed roads, but the road along the cliffs between them, despite its frequent viewpoints and boardwalks, has no tarmac.

Lynne and Bordeira Beach, October 2013

The village of Bordeira, as distinct from its beach, is several kilometres inland and on the other side of the N-268. Wrapped round the base of a low hill, Bordeira is a wonderfully unspoilt example of an Algarve village. There are no holiday villas here, just the old houses, well maintained and freshly whitewashed.

Bordeira, October 2013

This year we stopped for coffee in the village café where few concessions are made to tourists. Three or four locals had spread themselves and their Sunday papers (Portuguese tabloids are as lurid and fact-free as their British cousins) over the outside tables whilst the owner stood by the roadside skinning a rabbit. I am happy to report she carefully washed her hands before making our coffee.

Bordeira, October 2013

A little further on, a road running northwest from the end of the A-22 motorway joins the N-268. We often come to the west coast this way, winding through the low wind turbine crowned hills beneath the warm, fragrant pines, past eucalyptus and cork oaks, the bark stripped to head height.

Aljezur

The N-268 crosses the Ribeira da Cerca at Aljezur, the river splitting the town in two. According to the old Rough Guide I quoted earlier ‘… to the west of the river is the drab old Moorish town, straggling along the side of a hill below the ruins of a 10th century castle.’

Aljezur, October 2005

I must take issue with the word ‘drab’. Making your way up through Aljezur’s charming old streets you reach the castle. There is not enough left of it to justify the effort, but the views over the old town....

Alzejur old town from the castle, October 2005

across the countryside…

Countryside below Aljezur Castle, October 2005

…and to the sea beyond are ample reward.

A distant view of the sea from Aljezur Castle, October 2005

The ‘new’ town across the river was built 200 years ago as ‘the old site was an unhealthy, mosquito infected place.’ The mosquitoes are long gone, and the ‘new’ town is a bit dull by comparison.

Odeceixe

Odeceixe is the last village in the Algarve. It sits below the road hunched under a hill topped with a dilapidated windmill. In the much restored village centre is a small coffee shop which sells a fine almond cake and what is possibly the definitive Portuguese apple cake, which may account for our repeated visits.

Odeceixe, September 2010

Keeping your nerve and driving through what appears to be a pedestrianised area but isn’t...

The centre of Odeceixe - not really pedestrianized, October 2010

....you can follow a small road down the side of the valley of the little Ribeira da Odeceixe which for its last 20km forms the boundary between the Algarve and the Alentejo. At the end is the hamlet of Praia de Odeceixe overlooking a large and often windswept beach.

Sometimes the sun shines, Praia de Odeceixe, September 2010

The river flows along the northern edge of the beach until it reaches the sea.

Sometime you need wrap up against the wind, Praia de Odeceixe, November 2008

Zambujeira do Mar

Venturing into the Alentejo you reach Zambujeira do Mar, the only out-and-out holiday resort on this stretch of coast. We visited on a warm, sunny September day, but unlike on the south coast, the season was clearly over, the beach was almost deserted.....

Zambujeira Beach, September 2010

and so was the town.

Zambujeira, September 2010

Here, having gone beyond the bounds of the Algarve, this post ends. The climate along the Algarve’s south coast is the most benign in Europe. The west coast can be warm, even in October, but the frequent wind means the climate here is ideal only for surfers. Obviously, the west coast receives far fewer visitors, but that does not mean it is not worth a trip.

Algarve Posts

1: The Algarve: Delights and Depredations(2010)
2: The Algarve: Random Delights (2012)
3: Mexilhoeira Grande and a Long Lost Cousin (2013)
4: The West Coast (2013)
5: Lagos (2014)
6: Castro Marim and Vila Real do Santo António (2015)
7: The Boxes of Carvoeiro (2016)
8: Mertola and Alcoutim: Strongholds by the Guadiana River (2017) - Also under Alentejo
9: Silves, Former Capital of the Algarve (2018)
10: Eating the Algarve (2022)
11: Drinking the Algarve (2022)