Mick Hartley

Border Country

Photos of winter in North Korea’s Uiju county, next to the Chinese border. From NK News. No photographer credit given, understandably given the penalties for this kind of unofficial journalism.

The harshness of life up in the cold north of the country is clear enough.

Hekou broken bridge used to connect Dandong to North Korea and was used by Chinese soldiers to help North Korean forces during the Korean War.

A soldier clasping a knife walks past a young boy and his grandmother treading the icy paths in Uiju County, North Korea.

A North Korean man collects bundles of rice straw, which the woman beside him then weaves into rope.

A young North Korean guard stands by a border outpost in Uiju County, North Korea. Soldiers will be on the lookout for anyone trying to illegally cross into China, right across the river.

Men push a load of logs across the frozen tundra in Uiju County. 

A man fastens two buckets of fresh water on his back. When pipes freeze over during the winter, not a rare occurrence, people go out to collect water from nearby lakes and rivers. 

An old woman carries a bag labeled "fodder" across a frozen path in Uiju County. While it's unclear what's inside, it is clear Chinese packaging makes its way into the North.

A young woman wearing high-heeled boots and a light pink handbag and black backpack makes her way across a frozen path in Uiju County. 

When the pipes freeze over, people head down to the riverside to do daily tasks such as laundry. The clothes would freeze to and from the river, meaning extra time is needed for the laundry to melt before drying.

Guard post along the border with China

In 2018, the number of North Koreans fleeing to the South stood at 1042, just slightly less than in the previous year, but significantly lower since pre-Kim Jong Un years.

Guarding the border.

Local citizens transport an ice box on their bikes along a frozen path in Uiju county.

North Korean fishing boats line a shipyard in North Pyongan Province. Since fuel prices have gone up since 2017, North Korean fishermen have struggled to secure gasoline for their boats, leading to price hikes in seafood.

Dinner For One

This old comedy sketch is a regular feature of New Year's Eve in Germany. Now even the BBC has caught up.

Since the essence of this is repetition, here's my post in full from 2009: Same Procedure as Every Year:

None of us like that feeling of being left out, especially in the midst of all the New Year celebrations. So here's a chance to join in by sharing the experience of the Germans, Swedes, Danes, and god knows who else, as they watch, as they do every New Year's Eve, this ancient comedy sketch - Dinner for One:

I remember reading about this:

Every New Year's Eve, half of all Germans plunk down in front of their televisions to watch a 1963 English comedy sketch called Dinner for One. Walk into any bar in Bavaria and shout the film's refrain: "The same procedure as last year, madam?" The whole crowd will shout back in automatic, if stilted, English: "The same procedure as every year, James." Even though Dinner for One is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most frequently repeated TV program ever, it has never been aired in the United Kingdom or the United States, and most of the English-speaking world is ignorant of its existence. When Der Spiegel probed the mystery last New Year's, it found that the BBC had not only never contemplated broadcasting this veddy British nugget in the United Kingdom, the BBC's spokesperson had never even heard of it.

but I'd never till this year actually watched the thing. It's certainly a bravura performance from old stager Freddie Frinton, though the actress playing Miss Sophie - May Warden - annoyingly insists on pronouncing her main line "The same procedure as every year, James", stressing year as well as every. Well, it annoyed me. ["Let's try that again, shall we, May dear? - only this time "every year". Get it? Every year. Stress on "every".Not "every year", or "every year". "Every year". I mean, if it's too much for you, I can always give Dame Sybil Thorndike a ring..."] And, at the end, the implication of upstairs naughtiness to come, far from being the subtle suggestion that I'd expected, could hardly be signaled more blatantly.  

Still, it's strangely watchable. (What, I wonder, do the Germans make of Mr. Winterbottom's Yorkshire accent?) And there is a certain pleasure in viewing again, when we already know what's going to happen - though I'm not sure where that leaves most theories of humour, which tend to stress the unexpected element as being crucial to getting the laugh.

After seeing it a couple of times it's now lodged in my mind as a kind of archetype. I'm already wondering if I hadn't perhaps seen it before, in an earlier, more innocent, life.

That was the original English version. It was re-recorded in Hamburg in 1963, in a slightly lengthier version, with a German intro.

Yellow study

One of Magnum's photos of the year, from Ian Berry. A restaurant on the road between Apartado and Santa Marta where a man studies a hand-written piece of paper. Colombia, 2018.

[Photo © Ian Berry | Magnum Photos]

Assad's triumph

Further analysis on Syria, from Hassan Hassan in the Observer. Yes, Assad has won:

Taken together, the military and diplomatic developments over the past six months leave no room for doubt: Assad has decisively won the conflict. The rebels’ former backers have not only given up on challenging his regime, they now actively want to embrace it – whether in public or in private. Internally, the regime has crushed any potent or legitimate opposition. Jihadists operating in north-western pockets of land under Turkish influence will be unlikely to find a foreign backer. Unlike the geopolitical winds that buffeted Saddam Hussein in the 1990s after the first Gulf war, everything is blowing strongly in Assad’s favour.  [...]

Moscow has succeeded in persuading countries such as the UAE of the logic that a strong regime in Damascus will become less reliant on Iran and thus less beholden to it. The regime will naturally choose to restore its pre-2011 autonomy if empowered, the thinking goes....

The nature of this conflict, then, has changed drastically, with influential Arab countries now using their diplomatic capital to enable the regime to restore control over Syria. Countries that once funded the opposition fighting against Assad are working hard to strengthen him in the hope that he becomes less reliant on their rivals.

In other words - as I argued here - Syria is central to the region, at the heart of the struggle between Iran and the Arab states led by Saudi Arabia. And Assad knows this. So, with the West now completely out of the picture, the brutal slaughter of his own people by the Syrian leader can be quietly consigned to the history books.

H.M.P. London

Sclater Street Market:

The warm embrace of the motherland

From the Daily NK:

To influence the population living in its border areas, the North Korean authorities have publicly paraded a number of the country’s re-defectors (those who have previously fled the country but ultimately returned), sending them to visit different areas to deliver lectures on the ills of capitalism and their regret for ever having left the country.

“In early December in Hoeryong’s Onsong County, I listened to a lecture from a women in her 40s who had defected but then returned. She spoke about how even in China her status wasn’t guaranteed, she couldn’t get money, and she couldn’t go to the hospital when she was sick. She said the entire time she was outside North Korea she was discriminated against and treated as less than human, describing her life as one of a social outcast,” a source in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK....

An official from the Ministry of State Security present at the lecture said she came back because she missed the “warm embrace of the motherland” and that she and others like her are forgiven.

The lecture focused on the issue of financial hardship in a capitalist society like China, leading to a dehumanizing experience and potential sexual exploitation. The re-defector added that she was “surprised how fast our country is developing.”

“We’ve all heard a lot of lectures like this before so it’s nothing new, but people are always curious to hear about life in China. People talked a lot afterward about why she would have stayed in that ‘terrible capitalist world’ for six years if the situation was that bad,” a separate source in North Hamgyong Province said.

“I remember another lecture before this one featuring a lecturer who was a manager at a factory in Onsong County before defecting to South Korea and then coming back to North Korea again. But then a few years after that she and her entire family defected again. People kind of wonder if that’s what’s going on with this latest woman. I don’t think anyone just believes everything they tell us at those types of lectures.”

Yellow blue leaves

A refreshing dash of colour after the grey. Still lifes from photographer Juj Winn:

[Photos © Juj Winn]

On Instagram.

Brutal delights

More from photographer Simon Phipps - previously here and here - on the brutalist concrete delights of modernist British architecture:

Balfron Tower...Erno Goldfinger...Poplar, London...1965-67

Charles Wilson Building...Denys Lasdun...Leicester University...1966

County Hall...Fred Pooley...Aylesbury...1964-66

Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul...Percy Thomas Partnership...Clifton, Bristol...1972-73

Coventry Point...John Madin Design Group...Market Way, Coventry...1969-75

Hayward Gallery...LCC Architect's Department...South Bank, London...1963-68

Leicester Engineering Building...James Stirling and James Gowan...University of Leicester...1961-63

National Theatre...Denys Lasdun...South Bank, London...1969-76

Nuclear Physics Laboratory...Arup Associates...Oxford...1967

Nuffield Transplantation Unit, Western General Hospital...Peter Womersley...Edinburgh...1963-68

Priory Hall...City Architect, Arthur Ling...Coventry...1966

Queen Anne's Gate...Fitzroy Robinson & Partners, with Sir Basil Spence...Petty France, London...1976

Queen Elizabeth II Law Courts...Farmer and Dark...Liverpool...1973-84

Royal Insurance Headquarters...Tripe and Wakeham Partnership...Liverpool...1974-76

Swan House...Robert Matthew, Johnson-Marshall and Partners...Newcastle upon Tyne...1963-69

Trellick Tower...Erno Goldfinger...Cheltenham Estate, London...1968–72

Glenkerry House...Erno Goldfinger...Poplar, London...1972-5

Tinbergen Buiding...Leslie Martin...Oxford...1971
[Photos: Simon Phipps]

As well as Finding Brutalism, and Brutal London, Phipps has a new book out, Concrete Poetry: Post-War Modernist Public Art - "A visual journey through the public sculpture, art and architecture of Modernist Britain".

The Princess and the Human Rights Campaigner

A BBC documentary earlier this month looked at the mysterious case of Princess Latifa, daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, who tried to escape from her life of imprisonment early this year but was captured and hadn't been heard from since. This video, from Newsnight in May, shows a very sane and eloquent young woman talking about her situation, plus analysis which backs the story that she was kidnapped back to Dubai.

Now former UN rights chief Mary Robinson has her say - echoing the official Dubai line, that the Princess is now being treated for her supposed mental health problems:

Mrs Robinson, who recently met Sheikha Latifa, daughter of Dubai's ruler, said she was a "troubled young woman".

She told the BBC the princess regretted making a video in which she alleged confinement and torture.

Radha Stirling, head of the rights group Detained in Dubai, said questions remained about the princess's welfare.

"Anyone familiar with Princess Latifa's story who listened to the BBC Radio interview today with Mary Robinson will be astonished at the extent to which Mrs Robinson appeared to be reciting almost verbatim from Dubai's script," she said.

"What we heard today was Mary Robinson essentially reciting for BBC Radio listeners the content of the statement issued by the Dubai ruler's court."

She added: "This meeting in no way satisfies me that she [Sheikha Latifa] is free from the abuse that she told me she had suffered for years."  [...]

Mrs Robinson told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that she had been invited by Princess Haya, wife of Dubai's ruler, to "help with a family dilemma".

"The dilemma was that Latifa is vulnerable, she's troubled. She made a video that she now regrets and she planned an escape, or what was part of a plan of escape," Mrs Robinson said.

"I had lunch with her. She's a very likeable young woman but clearly troubled, clearly needs the medical care that she is receiving."

Mrs Robinson said the princess was suffering from "a serious medical situation" and receiving psychiatric care, but did not give further details. She said her family didn't want her to "endure any more publicity".  [...]

Ms Stirling said Mrs Robinson "had nothing to say" about the accusations Sheikha Latifa had made against her father.

"She said nothing about Latifa having planned her escape for nearly a decade, nor anything about her previous escape attempt," she said.

"She said nothing about the illegal raid of Latifa's boat in international waters, and the fact that she was screaming for asylum and begging to not be returned to the UAE. Mrs Robinson simply repeated again and again from the official Dubai statement that Latifa is in the 'loving care of her family' and that the whole issue is nothing more than a 'family matter'."

Another rights group, Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers, also said it was concerned by Mrs Robinson's comments.

"Mrs Robinson appears to have spent a couple of hours with Sheikha Latifa, and despite having no formal medical or psychiatric training, has somehow diagnosed her condition and concluded that she is receiving appropriate treatment. It is unclear on what basis Mrs Robinson considers herself qualified to do so," it said in a statement.

Mary Robinson, it may be recalled, is a member of the Elders - is in fact now chair of the Elders, replacing Jimmy Carter. They're a self-important group of "human rights" activists:

Our vision is of a world where people live in peace, conscious of their common humanity and their shared responsibilities for each other, for the planet and for future generations.

We envisage a world in which there is universal respect for human rights; in which poverty has been eliminated; in which people are free from fear and oppression and are able to fulfil their true potential.

Which is nice. 

Their record in brokering peace in North Korea has not been notably successful. Nor have they met with much more success in Somalia. 

One might almost get the impression that Mary Robinson and her Elders chums are in fact a bunch of useful idiots, making much noise about human rights while ingratiating themselves with some of the worst human rights abusers on the planet.

Only You (And You Alone)

The Platters, from the 1956 film Rock Around the Clock:

Excellent image here, even if the vocal seems just the teeniest bit out of synch.

With the classic line-up of lead singer Tony Williams, with Zola Taylor, Herb Reed, Paul Robi, David Lynch.

Previously, with The Great Pretender.  And of course there's always Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.