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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
What it was like to live as a diplomat in North Korea
Before North Korea closed its borders during the pandemic, Western visitors to the hermit kingdom were mostly forced to explore the country in highly regimented tour groups. Always under the watchful eye of their Korean minders, opportunities for genuine interaction with locals were scarce. But one group of foreigners is allowed to roam Pyongyang, the capital, more or less as they wish: the diplomats. Speaking to The Telegraph, they described how it was to live a life of relative freedom in one of the strangest and most repressive corners of the world. Firstly, the fact that North Korea is under heavy sanctions poses serious logistical challenges. For one, it is impossible to withdraw or send money to the country, which means embassy staff have to fly to China and bring back bags stuffed with cash to fund their missions. 'Every month, I or one of my staff would take the plane to Beijing, pick up 30 or 40,000 euros in cash, and bring it back,' said Mike Gifford, who served as the British ambassador to North Korea from 2012 to 2015. 'It was slightly surreal – you'll be at the airport and you'll see the German third secretary and he's got a trolley case with a little tag saying German government, but this is what we all did because there was no other way.' Finding staple products on the shopping run was also not a simple undertaking. 'We spent a lot of our spare time shopping, not because there is a vibrant shopping scene, but because you had to,' said Mr Gifford. There were only a few supermarkets that catered to foreigners, but 'the range of goods was not fantastic', he said. 'They would occasionally have whole chiller cabinets full of Perrier water and that's great, but I don't always want Perrier water,' Mr Gifford added. Pyongyang has a decent amount of bars, cafés and restaurants – including an Italian pizza place and a Viennese coffee shop – but making friends with locals was not easy. Lindsey Miller, who spent two years in Pyongyang as the spouse of a British diplomat, said they would always be seated away from Koreans at the bars. She managed to strike up a friendship with a young woman who ran a bar not far from the embassy compound, but it wasn't easy. 'It's something I wrestled with the whole time I was there. How can you really get to know people? How can you really get to know what they think when you can't really ask them?' asked Ms Miller. The woman she befriended had spent time outside the country and could speak English, but the extent to which she could share details about her life was limited. Keeping in touch with friends back home in Britain and Europe was also challenging. While the Munsu-dong diplomatic compound in the east of the capital – where most of them were based – was one of the few places in the entire country to have WiFi, it was very slow. 'You could answer emails and you could send Facebook messages to people, but you'd have to wait for a video to load for ages on YouTube,' said Ms Miller. Ms Miller used to spend her days walking around the city, taking Taekwondo lessons and going to a traditional Korean spa. She would also explore what was behind the doors of Pyongyang's nondescript shopfront doors. 'You'll go into a building that will have a shop that sells lawn mowers and cheese. Then, across from that will be a little cafe that's tucked away that you would never know was in there. Then you walk through the back and there's a gym and it's an amazingly equipped gym,' said Ms Miller. 'They're in these faceless buildings so you have to go in to see what's inside.' Regular trips to China to stock up on supplies became part of the diplomats' routine. 'When we crossed the bridge from North Korea to China, it sounds ridiculous, but we felt like finally we were in a country of freedom,' said Thomas Schaefer, who served two non-consecutive terms as Germany's ambassador to North Korea. 'It's funny but that is how you feel when you come out of North Korea.' Mr Gifford said his China excursions would usually be train rides to Dandong, a city right on the North Korean border, or flights to Beijing. 'We would come back with boxes full of stuff, which in the UK would be staples, like cheese, butter and bacon,' he said. Healthcare was also a reason to head over the border. While there was a doctor who worked out of the United Nations offices in Pyongyang who could treat diplomats for minor ailments, for anything more serious, foreigners were advised to go to China. Alastair Morgan, who served as the British ambassador to North Korea from 2015 to 2018, remembered that a diplomatic spouse fell ill and was taken to Pyongyang General Hospital. However, the treatment he was administered only made his condition worse and it was eventually decided that he needed to be treated outside of North Korea. 'He was driven up to the Chinese border and the first hospital in China that looked at him wouldn't take him, then the second took him and ended up treating him for acute appendicitis,' said Mr Morgan. The lack of safety is one of the reasons that some missions have yet to reopen their embassies after the Covid-19 pandemic forced them all out, several of the former diplomats told The Telegraph. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which laid the groundwork for a new and stronger partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang, also contributed to the reluctance to reopen the missions. North Korea allowed foreign missions to return late last year and some, including the Swedish and Polish embassies, have reopened. However, others, including the UK and Germany, have held off. Mr Schaefer said that Pyongyang had invited Germany to reopen its embassy but the government was still considering the logistical concerns. Despite the clash of values and the numerous challenges of hosting Westerners, the former diplomats believed that there were – and are – benefits to having a presence inside the country. 'We could give messages into the regime that we could not be confident would be fed in by their diplomats overseas,' explained Mr Morgan. He also added that having a presence on the ground allowed for diplomats to collect information about life in North Korea that could be sent back to headquarters in Europe. The North Korean side also saw benefits to having the diplomats there. Having Western envoys inside the country gave North Korea a certain degree of recognition as well as access to alternative views, Mr Gifford explained. 'They wanted to be able to put their case across to as many people as they could,' he said. The Western embassies would also run humanitarian operations and language programmes for local communities, which were welcomed by the regime. However, while helpful, these were relatively small programmes bogged down by lots of bureaucracy and red tape and in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, the country needed a bigger partner that could offer support without asking any questions. 'Coming out of a three-and-a-half-year Covid lockdown, they needed a lot of help. They had no food, they had no medicine, they had no energy, they had nothing,' said Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'They had this opportunity with Russia to get food, fuel and hard currency, and so they made that choice, and the sacrifice would be their relations with European countries.' North Korea's relationship with other Western countries, namely the US, had also taken a turn for the worse. During Donald Trump's first term as president, engagement with North Korea and Kim Jong-un was a priority for the administration. The two men met three times at summits in Singapore, Hanoi and in the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas. However, the meetings were largely unsuccessful and ended up damaging relations between the two countries even more, said Dr Cha. 'The North Koreans and the leader specifically suffered the biggest embarrassment ever in the history of the leadership of the country when they engaged in these summits with Donald Trump and then Donald Trump walked out of the summit in Hanoi,' he said. 'He walked out saying there's no deal here and he literally left Kim Jong-un within the first day, before lunchtime.' Since Mr Trump was sworn in for his second term earlier this year, he has not made the same grand statements about meeting with Kim, although he reportedly tried to pass a letter to the regime's representative at the United Nations in New York. These efforts have reportedly been shunned – a clear sign of how much has changed in the last 10 years. 'Whatever Kim does, he won't go through the cycle that he went through before, which finished with the failure in Hanoi,' said Mr Morgan.
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
What it was like to live as a diplomat in North Korea
Before North Korea closed its borders during the pandemic, Western visitors to the hermit kingdom were mostly forced to explore the country in highly regimented tour groups. Always under the watchful eye of their Korean minders, opportunities for genuine interaction with locals were scarce. But one group of foreigners is allowed to roam Pyongyang, the capital, more or less as they wish: the diplomats. Speaking to The Telegraph, they described how it was to live a life of relative freedom in one of the strangest and most repressive corners of the world. Firstly, the fact that North Korea is under heavy sanctions poses serious logistical challenges. For one, it is impossible to withdraw or send money to the country, which means embassy staff have to fly to China and bring back bags stuffed with cash to fund their missions. 'Every month, I or one of my staff would take the plane to Beijing, pick up 30 or 40,000 euros in cash, and bring it back,' said Mike Gifford, who served as the British ambassador to North Korea from 2012 to 2015. 'It was slightly surreal – you'll be at the airport and you'll see the German third secretary and he's got a trolley case with a little tag saying German government, but this is what we all did because there was no other way.' Finding staple products on the shopping run was also not a simple undertaking. 'We spent a lot of our spare time shopping, not because there is a vibrant shopping scene, but because you had to,' said Mr Gifford. There were only a few supermarkets that catered to foreigners, but 'the range of goods was not fantastic', he said. 'They would occasionally have whole chiller cabinets full of Perrier water and that's great, but I don't always want Perrier water,' Mr Gifford added. Pyongyang has a decent amount of bars, cafés and restaurants – including an Italian pizza place and a Viennese coffee shop – but making friends with locals was not easy. Lindsey Miller, who spent two years in Pyongyang as the spouse of a British diplomat, said they would always be seated away from Koreans at the bars. She managed to strike up a friendship with a young woman who ran a bar not far from the embassy compound, but it wasn't easy. 'It's something I wrestled with the whole time I was there. How can you really get to know people? How can you really get to know what they think when you can't really ask them?' asked Ms Miller. The woman she befriended had spent time outside the country and could speak English, but the extent to which she could share details about her life was limited. Keeping in touch with friends back home in Britain and Europe was also challenging. While the Munsu-dong diplomatic compound in the east of the capital – where most of them were based – was one of the few places in the entire country to have WiFi, it was very slow. 'You could answer emails and you could send Facebook messages to people, but you'd have to wait for a video to load for ages on YouTube,' said Ms Miller. Ms Miller used to spend her days walking around the city, taking Taekwondo lessons and going to a traditional Korean spa. She would also explore what was behind the doors of Pyongyang's nondescript shopfront doors. 'You'll go into a building that will have a shop that sells lawn mowers and cheese. Then, across from that will be a little cafe that's tucked away that you would never know was in there. Then you walk through the back and there's a gym and it's an amazingly equipped gym,' said Ms Miller. 'They're in these faceless buildings so you have to go in to see what's inside.' Regular trips to China to stock up on supplies became part of the diplomats' routine. 'When we crossed the bridge from North Korea to China, it sounds ridiculous, but we felt like finally we were in a country of freedom,' said Thomas Schaefer, who served two non-consecutive terms as Germany's ambassador to North Korea. 'It's funny but that is how you feel when you come out of North Korea.' Mr Gifford said his China excursions would usually be train rides to Dandong, a city right on the North Korean border, or flights to Beijing. 'We would come back with boxes full of stuff, which in the UK would be staples, like cheese, butter and bacon,' he said. Healthcare was also a reason to head over the border. While there was a doctor who worked out of the United Nations offices in Pyongyang who could treat diplomats for minor ailments, for anything more serious, foreigners were advised to go to China. Alastair Morgan, who served as the British ambassador to North Korea from 2015 to 2018, remembered that a diplomatic spouse fell ill and was taken to Pyongyang General Hospital. However, the treatment he was administered only made his condition worse and it was eventually decided that he needed to be treated outside of North Korea. 'He was driven up to the Chinese border and the first hospital in China that looked at him wouldn't take him, then the second took him and ended up treating him for acute appendicitis,' said Mr Morgan. The lack of safety is one of the reasons that some missions have yet to reopen their embassies after the Covid-19 pandemic forced them all out, several of the former diplomats told The Telegraph. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which laid the groundwork for a new and stronger partnership between Moscow and Pyongyang, also contributed to the reluctance to reopen the missions. North Korea allowed foreign missions to return late last year and some, including the Swedish and Polish embassies, have reopened. However, others, including the UK and Germany, have held off. Mr Schaefer said that Pyongyang had invited Germany to reopen its embassy but the government was still considering the logistical concerns. Despite the clash of values and the numerous challenges of hosting Westerners, the former diplomats believed that there were – and are – benefits to having a presence inside the country. 'We could give messages into the regime that we could not be confident would be fed in by their diplomats overseas,' explained Mr Morgan. He also added that having a presence on the ground allowed for diplomats to collect information about life in North Korea that could be sent back to headquarters in Europe. The North Korean side also saw benefits to having the diplomats there. Having Western envoys inside the country gave North Korea a certain degree of recognition as well as access to alternative views, Mr Gifford explained. 'They wanted to be able to put their case across to as many people as they could,' he said. The Western embassies would also run humanitarian operations and language programmes for local communities, which were welcomed by the regime. However, while helpful, these were relatively small programmes bogged down by lots of bureaucracy and red tape and in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, the country needed a bigger partner that could offer support without asking any questions. 'Coming out of a three-and-a-half-year Covid lockdown, they needed a lot of help. They had no food, they had no medicine, they had no energy, they had nothing,' said Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'They had this opportunity with Russia to get food, fuel and hard currency, and so they made that choice, and the sacrifice would be their relations with European countries.' North Korea's relationship with other Western countries, namely the US, had also taken a turn for the worse. During Donald Trump's first term as president, engagement with North Korea and Kim Jong-un was a priority for the administration. The two men met three times at summits in Singapore, Hanoi and in the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas. However, the meetings were largely unsuccessful and ended up damaging relations between the two countries even more, said Dr Cha. 'The North Koreans and the leader specifically suffered the biggest embarrassment ever in the history of the leadership of the country when they engaged in these summits with Donald Trump and then Donald Trump walked out of the summit in Hanoi,' he said. 'He walked out saying there's no deal here and he literally left Kim Jong-un within the first day, before lunchtime.' Since Mr Trump was sworn in for his second term earlier this year, he has not made the same grand statements about meeting with Kim, although he reportedly tried to pass a letter to the regime's representative at the United Nations in New York. These efforts have reportedly been shunned – a clear sign of how much has changed in the last 10 years. 'Whatever Kim does, he won't go through the cycle that he went through before, which finished with the failure in Hanoi,' said Mr Morgan.
The Sun
29-06-2025
- The Sun
Dark side of Egypt where tourists are tortured & killed and Brits are banged up & ‘forced to pay bribes by corrupt cops'
WHEN it comes to a perfect holiday destination for Brits, Egypt has it all - five-star resorts, scorching temperatures and stunning beaches. But beyond the boundaries of its luxury all-inclusive havens is a dark underbelly that the country's tourist board would rather holidaymakers didn't see. 18 18 18 18 The Pharoah nation sucks in a staggering 18million tourists each year, and the industry props up around 10 percent of the whole economy, and it's clear to see why. Flocking in their droves, tourists arrive to visit ancient tombs and lounge on the two magnificent coastlines of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. But beyond the plush resorts of the popular Sharm el Sheikh and Hurghada - Egypt harbours dirty secrets. Tourists have disappeared in mysterious circumstances - only to turn up mutilated or dead. A brutal police force deals in bribes and locks people up on bogus charges, including Brit holidaymakers. The ancient-world sites are riddled with canny con artists who know how to wangle money out of tourists. And animals are tortured and worked to death - with some discarded in makeshift graveyards around the back of the pyramids. Egypt's picture-postcard image is being tested, with a former British ambassador to the country recently branding it a "police state". John Casson said the authorities are "violent and vindictive" and urged the government to "deploy the full range of tools it has to protect British citizens". "This includes official travel advice that should caution against travel to Egypt," he said. "It is a police state in Egypt. It is violent and vindictive and it is abusing a British citizen." Egypt's dangerous underbelly was dragged into the spotlight last month when a Colombian tourist suffered a grisly fate. Ivonne Latorre, 24, was found dying in a coma at the side of a road after going missing from the Zamna electronic music festival in Cairo. She has sustained horrific injuries after crossing paths with men posing as producers - and tragically died five days later in hospital. Nobody knows who mutilated Ivonne, but an investigation has been launched into the beauty queen's mysterious death. Holidaymakers have also accused the country's police officers of corruption, arresting tourists on bogus charges and offering them a way out with bribes. Tony Camoccio, a 56-year-old Londoner, was arrested and locked up in a terrifying jail for simply patting a security guard on the back. The window business owner was told he was going to be charged with sexual assault and locked up for seven years. He told The Sun: "I was locked in a cage outside for two nights with 80 other people. I was just in a T-shirt and shorts and it was one degrees at night. 18 18 18 18 "Then they told me to sign a document and said I would be released." But the document Tony signed was not a release paper - he says he'd been tricked into signing a confession written in Arabic. Tony said: "It was all about money. My lawyer was told I could get out if we 'made the policeman happy' - clearly meaning a bribe." But the most shocking thing Tony witnessed was inside the brutal Police Station 1 prison. He said: "You couldn't sleep at night because the guards were beating women and children, making them scream. It was horrible. "Egypt is a dangerous place. Most tourists just stay in their hotels because they know that, but it means they don't see the truth. "I used to love going on holiday there, but I'll never step foot in that country again." Tony was lucky to escape the police's clutches when he was released after just over a week - but not everyone has been so fortunate. An Italian Cambridge University graduate, Giulio Regeni, 28, was tortured to death after being scooped up in 2016 - and Italy blames the Egyptian authorities. His mutilated body was found in a ditch near Cairo nine days after disappearing while on a research trip - and an autopsy revealed he had been subjected to extreme torture. Rome has officially charged four members of Egypt's National Security Agency with his murder and torture, and prosecutors still hope for a trial. 'Tourist exploitation' While only a fraction of tourists have serious run-ins with the police, there are other murky realities about Egypt that almost all will experience. One is the near-constant stream of scams that plague tourists as they navigate the cities and attractions. A popular travel blogger who visited Egypt recently vowed never to return - and even re-booked flights to get out two days early. Antonina, behind the Embrace Someplace blog, said: "The constant 'in your face' deceit was one of the worst parts about visiting Egypt. 18 18 "These daily demands for as much money as possible started to get to us because it happened no less than 10 times a day. "Eventually we just stopped leaving the hotel. To put it bluntly, I felt like a walking ATM while visiting Egypt. "It seemed to me that, as a tourist, the objective was to get as much money from me as possible. The level of tourist exploitation is absolutely next level." The Pyramids of Giza - visited by tens of thousands every day - are a hotspot for the scams, particularly as the industry picks up again post-Covid. The problem is so bad it has driven a surge in social media influencers creating "avoid the scams" videos. Men with whistles are documented posing as officials, trying to get tourists to follow them to a spot only to charge an extortionate price for the "service". Others falsely tell visitors they are walking the wrong way - ultimately hoping to charge for pictures taken with the pyramids, according to Sam Mayfair's viral TikTok report. 18 18 18 But the ongoing case that pushed John Casson to call for a change to UK travel advice is that of a British-Egyptian man who has been locked up there for years, with the UN ruling that he is being held illegally. Alaa Abd el-Fattah was banged up five years ago - and has not been released despite his sentence expiring in September. His mum, Laila Soueif, in London, is on death's door after almost 300 days of hunger strike - and she has vowed not to eat until her son is free. James Lynch, working for Alaa's campaign, told The Sun that David Lammy's progress with the Egyptian authorities "risks being too slow for Laila and Alaa, British citizens whose health and lives are at serious risk as a result of their prolonged hunger strikes". Alaa's unfair detention echoes the story of Laura Plummer, a shop worker from Hull, who was locked up over prescription painkillers found in her luggage. The Brit ultimately spent 14 months in horrific conditions. Laura was convicted at trial, but she says a guilty verdict was recorded due to a mistake in translation. She was freed in 2019 following a Sun campaign and said: "The prison was horrendous. I was in a cell with 200 people and only 84 beds." Laura was moved from Cairo to Hurghada Prison, where she said she "witnessed the most horrendous things", including "two girls getting tortured with sticks". 18 18 She said: 'What should have been a two-week holiday in the sun turned into a 15-month trip to hell." Left to die Animal abuse is also a problem in the country, an issue brought to light by a harrowing PETA Asia investigation. The animal rights group uncovered the routine abuse of the creatures forced to work at the pyramids and other attractions. Donkeys, horses and camels in particular are worked to death ferrying tourists around in the scorching heat, and often treated cruelly by their handlers. A recent report said that "handlers viciously beat animals who are simply too exhausted to go on". It said: "Screaming camels are viciously beaten with sticks by men and children at the Birqash Camel Market before being sold to the tourism industry. "Sick, injured, or starving horses and camels are often abandoned by carriage operators who treat them like disposable tools." Tour companies have started moving away from offering camel rides after widespread outrage at the findings of successive investigations, but the local operators are pushing back. As if all that isn't enough for tourists to deal with, a surge of fatal shark attacks have terrorised the coast in recent years. A 48-year-old Italian man was mauled to death in December, and a 24-year-old Russian man was killed in June of 2023. There have been at least two more confirmed deaths from shark attacks in the past ten years - and a host of injuries. It's Red Sea coast makes it far more dangerous to swim around than any of the other countries on the Med, as this map shows. Most visits to Egypt will pass without hitch but, after four years of diplomatic experience in the country, John Casson said the nation must do more to protect Brits, who bring in millions each year. He said: "Egypt cannot have it both ways. It pretends to be a friend and depends on flows of British tourists to keep its economy afloat. "It needs to discover that that kind of partnership is not compatible with abusing our citizens and blocking our embassy from carrying out the most fundamental consular actions on their behalf." 18 18 18
BreakingNews.ie
27-06-2025
- Politics
- BreakingNews.ie
British ambassador to leave diplomatic service but remain in Dublin after ‘falling in love with the city'
British ambassador to Ireland Paul Johnston has announced he and his wife will continue to live in Dublin after he leaves his role in September. Mr Johnston said at a garden party at the ambassador's residence to mark King Charles's birthday that they had 'so fallen in love with the city' that they had decided to stay in Dublin permanently. Advertisement In his speech, he said: "That's very much what it's felt like for Nicola [his wife] and me in Ireland – that the people we've met have been the highlight of our time here. "And it's primarily because of the people that we've met that we've taken quite a big decision." He has served in a number of diplomatic roles prior to his appointment as envoy in Dublin in 2020, including as the UK ambassador to Sweden from 2011 to 2016 and as the deputy permanent representative to Nato from 2016 to 2017. Mr Johnston says he will be taking up a new, non-diplomatic job in Dublin later this year. He came to Ireland five years ago during the height of the Covid pandemic and he was at the centre of often very difficult British-Irish relations over the UK's departure from the European Union. He said he cannot yet disclose what role he will take up later this year as it is 'subject to a UK government approval process'.
Washington Post
09-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
The world is going to hell, but don't worry: Trump will be fine!
It was, President Donald Trump teased, 'a very, very big announcement to make, like, as big as it gets … one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject.' When Trump actually announced his trade deal with Britain Thursday from the Oval Office, it wasn't quite as sensational as advertised: It turned out to be just the outline of a deal, and 'final details are being written up in the coming weeks.' The British ambassador said it was 'just the end of the beginning,' and a reporter for Britain's Sky News asked whether Trump was 'overstating the reach and significance of this deal.'
