Date: 24 Apr 96 07:29:15 EDT
Subject: Internet Campaign to Help North Korean Flood Victims 

Bernie and Joseph,

It was great speaking with Joseph by phone earlier this month, and thanks for
your E-mail, Bernie. I'm glad you got my T.T. through your Tokyo bank okay. As
I said earlier, I haven't been quite the same since my trip up to the North
Korean border, and I very much wanted to do something to help. 

As I told Joseph, I and a friend from Shenzhen, China flew up to Dandong
(across from the Sinuiju border) on April 4, and spent several days there,
trying to experience as much of North Korea from there as we could without being
able to go in. (American passports cannot currently get a tourist visa to get
in, and PRC China citizens needed 10 days to process the paper work.)

I have been living in China for the past 10 years, have been to South Korea
several times, and took the Panmunjom tour from Seoul this past February. I
have been wanting to go to North Korea for many years, so we took our Easter
break to go up and get as close as we could. 

The timing was ironic, because the same day we arrived, the news over CNN in our
hotel room was that some armed North Korean troops had made an incursion into
the Panmunjom DMZ, and Pyongyang had announced that they no longer recognized
the 1953 peace accord. (But the analysis was that some political posturing
from Pyongyang was going on to coincide with the elections in Seoul and the
Clinton trip to Cheju, and it was not a genuine military provocation.) 

From our hotel room, overlooking the Yalu River, we could look across to the
Sinuiju shoreline on the North Korea side, and it was unnaturally ghostly over
there, with very few lights visible in the twilight. We changed channels, and
watched with great interest the Pyongyang TV channel that could be picked up
from Dandong. It was very much socialist-state TV, much like China's used to be
in the early '80's.

We went to a number of little Korean restaurants and pubs in Dandong, and talked
with the ethnic Korean proprietors about their experiences across the border,
and those of their relatives still in North Korea. It was grim, they said, with
people not having enough to eat, nor enough electricity to turn on the lights at
night. Some people had sneaked over from Sinuiju, risking being caught, to ask
for food or a full meal, and then gone back over again. They said, that 10
years ago, their relatives were better off than they were. But now things had
changed, and China had prospered, and North Korea was not in good shape.

Having enjoyed a Manchurian-style bulgogi dinner as we chatted with the family
that ran the little restaurant, we asked where local Koreans went in the
evening for a few beers. The proprietor recommended a North Korean-run
nightclub, with karaoke and dancing, and showed us how to get there.

A couple of people were singing Korean folk songs, and there was an animated
group at the next table, laughing, drinking beer, and taking turns for a spin on
the dance floor. One man in particular---an animated, bussinessman-type in his
forties, who had doffed his suit jacket---was having a very good time dancing
with the various ladies, and later, just by himself. He was very engaging to
watch. Then a disco song came on, and we went out on the dance floor. It
wasn't long before this man danced over, trying very hard to mimic my steps.
And he was very good and full of energy. Pretty soon everyone else just left
the dance floor and we continued until we were both covered with sweat.

Another guy in his party came over to me, speaking very good English, and
insisted that we join their party, which we were only too happy to do. It
turned out that these two men were from a large trading company in Pyongyang, in
China on business. I was the first American they had ever come face to face
with, and they were the first North Koreans I had ever met. We spent the rest
of the evening drinking with them, and then they invited us to come to a sauna
with them in the wee hours---a typical Korean way to sober up after a
high-alcohol evening of fun. We picked-up on a little sensitivity on the part
of their Chinese-Korean hosts in asking us along, my being an American, and they
being North Korean.

But the next morning, our new North Korean friends called us at our hotel and
invited us to go sightseeing with them. (They showed up without their wary
hosts.) We walked out the bombed-out Yalu River Bridge, which had been
destroyed by the Americans during the Korean War, of which half is still
standing on the Chinese side, and now open to tourists. There was irony in our
all being there together, taking turns snapping pictures of everyone: an
American, two North Koreans, a Chinese, and a Chinese-Korean. 

Then we went out on a Chinese motorboat and did a sightseeing buzz-by the
Sinuiju shoreline, like all the other tourists. These boats don't discreetly
confine themselves to the midway-point of the river; they blatantly buzz way
over on the North Korean side and get real close to the boats and wharf-line.

On the Dandong side of the river, the Chinese had turned glimpses of North Korea
into a lucrative tourist attraction, which they were making a lot of money off:
the boat trips, selling glimpses of the opposite shore through high- powered
binoculars, and hawking DPRK postage stamps and coins. 

But a close up look at the Sinuiju side of the river revealed a rather grim-
looking shoreline. A rundown-looking old ferris wheel, motionless and forlorn
in an empty shoreline park. Many rusty old boats with people looking rather 
vacantly back at tourists that had come to catch a glimpse of them. A lot of 
neglected-looking buildings along the shore. Some men in military uniforms 
here and there strolling rather sadly. 

I had taken this same buzz-by boat tour the day before going with our new
friends from Pyongyang, and even without them aboard, had found it very
difficult to take any of the pictures of people I had originally planned to
take. But with them aboard, in their business suits, they looked across just
like I did, quietly, unapologetically, without denial. It was the reality, at
least in Sinuiju and other places, and they weren't trying to keep me from
seeing it. People on the shoreline looked back at me with some interest,
because evidently, there weren't many foreigners that came on these boats---
mainly Chinese. I remember one rather ragged-looking soldier, with a
bandage over one eye, contemplating me for a while from an old rusted-out boat
directly in front of me. He then motioned for me to take his picture. So I
reached down and opened the camera and took his picture, and motioned back that
I had got it. He grinned, waved back, and made a peace symbol with his hands.

Back at the Dandong pier, another bridge had been constructed next to the bombed
-out one, which today is the main railroad artery into Norh Korea, connecting
Beijing with Pyongyang. Near the vehicle entrance, there were pallet after
pallet of rice and grain stacked high, waiting to be carted over to North Korea.
We saw a few flat-bed Chinese trucks carrying loads across the bridge. The food
shortage was very, very real.

Our friends from Pyongyang had wanted us to come up to Yanji (the capital of the
Yanbian Ethnic Korean Autonomous Zone in China), where they were headed on
business. We couldn't, because we had to get back down South, to return to work
after the holidays. But we did extend our stay in Dandong, to spend an extra
day with them.

On our final night together, there was a lot of emotion, and a lot of hugging
and promises to keep in touch upon separating. 

After returning to Hong Kong, I started trawling the Net for news and material
about North Korea, and came across your Internet campaign, (which I downloaded
and printed out). And after studying it over, I felt compelled to send you the
contribution.

Your efforts have been very impressive---very moving and thorough. You
perceived a humanitarian need and did something about it. I think it's
wonderful what you've done! I liked your response to David Brown (at the U.S.
State Department), and I think you vividly hit the point home when you mentioned
your own background of being a survivor of the holocaust in W W II. 

I just returned from a second trip---this time to Yanji---having gotten some
things out of the way at work, to see my two North Korean friends, before they
wind up their business trip and go back in to Pyongyang. 

They know your Belgian friend, Ludo, in Pyongyang, and he is known to people in
our company, as well, given that we're in the same field. I asked my friends if
they knew you, which they didn't. Ever-cautious about broaching subjects with
them which might offend them or hurt their dignity as North Koreans, I mentioned
your Internet Campaign, which they showed interest in. I showed them a printout
of your web page, which they read through with great interest. They talked
between themselves of how badly the Sinuiju area had been affected. 

When I told them I had donated a ton to your program, after having seen the
situation from Dandong and then meeting them, they said they were very grateful
for those that had cared about their people, and they thanked me for my
contribution.

You spoke of the building of "trust" and proving of "sincerity" vis-a- vis the
North Koreans, as they slowly open up to outsiders. And you spoke of their
warmth and hospitality.

My first night in Yanji, my friends took me to a North Korean nightclub, where
the manager (their good buddy) lavished hospitality (and a copious amount of
brandy) on us. We were ready to call it a night after the first bottle, but he
wouldn't take no for an answer, and plied us with two more bottles! Several of
us ended up completely drunk, and I have no recollection of how I got back to
the hotel room that night. But the next thing I was aware of was waking up,
very hungover, and seeing Mr. K. in his long-johns asleep, snoring gently, in
the bed next to me. My clothes had been neatly folded, and my socks had been
washed and hung to dry.

The next night, most of us were still hungover and approaching food and beer
very cautiously. Mr. P. and I wanted to get some sleep and left about midnight,
but Mr.K. was raring to keep going, and went on to another place with the
manager. I had no more than got back to the hotel and gotten in my pajamas when
there was a knock on the door: the nightclub manager bringing in Mr.K., with
the beer now having taken it's toll, aggravating a chronic problem he had with
his spleen. So that night, it was my turn to get him undressed, give him some
medicine and a cold compress, and put him to bed. He slept fitfully, and I kept
waking up to make sure he was alright. By about 4:30 in the morning,
fully-recovered, he looked over at me and I at him, and he came over and gave me
a big hug. I know a few words of Korean and he knows a few words of Chinese,
but there was much communication between us. There was trust and sincerity, and
knowing we could count on the other when we were in trouble. 

Picking up a Hong Kong newspaper yesterday in Beijing, on the flight back from
Yanji, I saw an article that the Hong Kong Government is working out details to
make an inter-government famine-aid contribution to North Korea. However, they
felt they couldn't make a general appeal to the public and community service
groups at this time, because not enough details of the North Korean situation
have been made public by their government. 

As you said earlier, just because the weather up there is starting to warmup
doesn't mean the problem is over. The worst may be yet to come--- in May and
June---before new crops can be harvested. 

Today's paper said that the U.S. Gov't was now encouraging the S.Korean Gov't to
woo Pyongyang into this latest peace accord proposal with humanitarian aid.

Hopefully things will move in a direction of permanent peace, but there is still
a lot of bureaucratic red tape between governments, and people in North Korea
need help now, without people's suffering being used as a negotiation point for
other agendas.

So you're going back to Pyongyang for a third trip in late-May or early-June.
Please put me down for a 2nd ton of rice. I'll send you another T.T. to your
Tokyo account after payday, later this week. 

If you want to put this letter on your web page, you have my permission.

Keep up the good work! You have my support! 

Best regards,

Kevin Curriston

@100452,3201.compuserve.com