Nick Bonner moved to Beijing as a lecturer in landscape architecture in the early 90s, but a North Korean striker in his football team started him on a 20 year journey that has seen him open up tourism into the DPRK, make documentaries about US defectors and lead the (North Korean) boys of ‘66 back out onto the pitch in England.
How did you first come to visit the DPRK?
I came to Beijing to lecture at the beginning of the 90s and went to stay with a friend, Josh Green, who had worked in North Korea for a year setting up TNT courier service. We both played football and one of our fellow players was a Beijing-based North Korean with whom we became friends. In 1993 he went back to Pyongyang to join a travel company, but had a serious problem – no one was visiting. North Korea had only opened to the West in 1987, so basically no one knew you could actually go. We first went over in August 1993.
What was that first visit like?
We found the whole trip so utterly fascinating – back then there was even less known of the country than now. There were very few destinations you could visit and even less interaction with locals. The country was simply empty of foreigners. Josh and I decided to set up Koryo Tours in the same year. We were never interested in just pure tourism. Rather, we believed we should run the business in a ‘responsible’ way, promoting cultural exchanges that could expose North Korea to foreigners.
Was it tough to get going?
Yes. At first we were taking in 50 tourists a year, which amounted to almost the total number of visitors who traveled to North Korea. Now our average is around 2,000 people yearly. Opening up new sites and itineraries has been one of our greatest challenges, and so has getting our groups to establish contact with the locals – though sometimes it has been a question of using simple strategies.
Such as?
In 2003 we started organizing sport exchanges. We first arranged a friendly football match between Beijing Celtic and the North Korean travel agency teams. We had planned to eat lunch together after the match, but the local team just left. When we organized the same match the following year we put on a picnic at half time, ensuring everyone socialized. Shared meals have become the norm now in all our sport-related events.
Any other teething problems?
One of the most difficult aspects has undoubtedly been trying to tell foreigners they can travel to North Korea. In this respect, the release of documentaries like A State of Mind (which follows two girls in Pyongyang as they prepare for their participation in the mass games, the most important sporting and theatrical event in North Korea) has helped shift people’s perceptions. They draw attention to the human side of the country, rather that its military and political ones.
How did you get into documentary making in the first place?
TV sports producer Dan Gordon approached me in 1999 trying to find out what happened to the North Korean football team that shocked the world in 1966 by beating Italy 1-0 in the World Cup in England. Perhaps the most striking aspect of that story was the way local football supporters in Middlesbrough, their host town, ‘adopted’ the North Korean players and became fanatical supporters – supposedly over 2,000 of them headed to Liverpool to watch their next match against Portugal.
Their performance started out strong. Early in the game, they were 3-0 up against Portugal. But the Portuguese fought back, eventually winning 5-3. The team went home and that was the last the world heard of it. Many said the players were sent to prison on their return, so we set about trying to track them down – which you can imagine is not easy task in a country like North Korea.
So how did you go about it?
I asked that first North Korean friend of mine to help, and five days later a fax came through with the names of seven surviving players. I don’t want to give it all away, but we ended up taking the team back to Middlesbrough and on a tour of the UK, where 12,000 fans welcomed them ‘home.’ Walking the 1966 North Korean football team onto the pitch to a standing ovation at Middlesbrough FC was one of those Hollywood moments that I never thought could happen. The whole story became a film called The Game of Their Lives.
And two more documentaries followed after that…
Yes. As we were editing The Game of Their Lives, we realized we’d only used a few minutes footage of the mass games and it was clear that if there was going to be another project this had to be it – the life of an individual amongst this mass. That’s how A State of Mind came to be. We got incredible access, and it remains my favorite film to date, the best introduction to a section of North Korean society.
But your biggest one was arguably about the Korean War defectors…
Crossing the Line was simply a film I thought we could never make – the story of US defectors who crossed into North Korea in the 60s. No one, not even the US Government, knew what had happened to them, whether they were dead or alive. The only known fact was that in the 80s, it appeared they had starred in some propaganda films.
We had repeatedly asked about the possibility of interviewing them, but had always been met with blank stares. Then, in 2006, while leading a tour, I was asked to go to the film office and as I was waiting a giant of a man dressed in a black North Korean suit with nero collar and lapel badge of Kim Il Sung sat down opposite me, and said in a Virginian drawl, “Hey boy I hear you wanna hear my story?”
It was the defector Joe Dresnok. I would have been more prepared if it had been Elvis. I knew more about Elvis than about this man, who had virtually left the known planet in 1962.
And what about your experience with fictional drama?
In 2004, together with the British Embassy, we brought the film Bend It Like Beckham to the Pyongyang International Film Festival, which received a very positive response from the audience. North Korea had never had a non-political film that was purely for entertainment, and they certainly had never had a ‘girl power’ movie. So that’s exactly what we set out to make.
We spent six years working with North Korean producers and Belgian co-producer and director Anja Daelemans to make Comrade Kim goes Flying, North Korea’s first non political film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013, and then at the Pyongyang International Film Festival. The production has also been the first North Korean film to be shown at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea.
Which was your most rewarding tour to arrange?
We have planned everything from bicycling, basketball and ultimate Frisbee, but perhaps my personal favorite was when my colleague Hannah brought over the Middlesbrough Women’s team to play the North Korean Women’s Army Team in 2010 – mostly for the reaction of the 7,000 strong student crowd who mobbed the girls as they did a tour of the city.
Over 20 years of running tours to the DPRK, what, if anything, has been the most surprising thing you’ve witnessed?
Helping out – even if in a small way – with the New York Philharmonic visit to North Korea in 2008 was certainly quite surreal. Having the USA flag flanked by the North Korea flag and both national anthems played during the performance was something I truly never thought would happen.
What questions are you most bored of being asked about the DPRK?
Nothing really bores us and there are simply no stupid questions – DPRK is still a pretty unknown place after all.
Do tourists ever show a specific attitude once they’re in the DPRK?
Not to sound corny, but I think North Korea simply attracts interesting tourists, people who are prepared to venture a little further than your Guilin boat trip. At the same time, we do get visitors who like to think everything is ‘put on’ for them – including 40,000 people on May Day on a day off drinking and having fun. Of course some things are staged, but not on that scale and certainly not for tourists.
People can also have quite frustrating responses though. We had a tourist who did his best to annoy his guide, telling him how free his country was and refusing to follow most of the guidelines we impart during our office briefing. We apologized to the guide, and her comment was simply: “It seems such a pity to waste your money going to a country you have already made your impression on.”
And what do you say to those who allege you’re helping fund an odious regime?
Generating contact between the maximum number of North Koreans and the maximum number of visitors on a human level, however fleeting, is one of our main goals. The level of demonization and misunderstanding about the regular people on each side is so strong that presenting a face to face human moment of interaction can and does lead people to think deeper about the similarities rather than the macro-scale differences.
At the end of the day the average North Korean shares many concerns and interests with people from abroad; the health of their parents, the education of their kids, getting a better job, finding time and ways to have fun, that kind of thing. All this is overlooked when the main focus is on marching soldiers and bellicose statements.
People will disagree, but it would be difficult to further isolate the country. And I think engagement is a better policy; non-engagement has not worked.
0 User Comments