New Zealand - far away without a care in the world

Having recently returned from a couple of weeks in NZ - almost entirely to see family and to get away from it all, I thought I'd start 2012 on the blog with a post about my observations as someone who has spent the last six year living abroad.  I've learned how much there is to appreciate in NZ, but also how much there is to bemoan.  It is something that can only really be understood once you have got used to how things work elsewhere, and what your expectations are around all sorts of everyday activities.

Whilst I was in NZ, the Eurozone crisis ticked over, Kim Jong Il died and Christmas happened.  However, the one thing you learn about being in NZ is that it is almost impossible to rely on the domestic media to know what is going on in the world, unless it is big.  Even then, you can rely on it to get things wrong - perpetually.

In NZ the economy appears to be ticking over nicely (no I didn't visit Christchurch) and there appears to be a level of optimism that is absent in Europe.  It can't all be the weather, as that was a bit patchy while I was there.  I put it down to naive lack of awareness of the stagnation in Europe and malaise in the United States.  Those I talked to about it appeared curious, but unaware of how it impacts New Zealand.  The real impacts are seen in how many more Japanese and Chinese tourists there appeared to be, relative to European and North American tourists, compared to previous years.  

The absurdly high New Zealand dollar is a crippler for tourists.   It was rare to ever think anything in NZ is cheap or good value.  The rip off prices for tourists seem absolutely ridiculous now.   Yes there are many items you can only buy in NZ that are quite unique and nice to look at, but they are not made by luxury brands in Italy, and they are not that special that foreign tourists are willing to fork out huge sums to buy them.   Asian tourists come to Europe for the European experience and will buy one or two luxury items while there, and a few items to remember it by.  NZ is not quite in the same league for shopping, what it has is scenery.

So anyway, what are the pluses and minuses I saw from NZ:

Pluses:

- Space!  You have LOADS of it, so much you don't appreciate it.  Why would ANY cities ever consider urban growth limits or intensification when you can offer so much living space to residents.  You do not appreciate how quiet and peaceful NZ is until you have spent lots of time in countries where you are never far away from towns or villages.

- Friendly service.  Service in the UK is variable, but rarely are retailers particularly friendly and helpful.  In NZ almost all were, including staff at food establishments that do not expect tips.  I nearly weeped with the standard of service I got at times, it was helpful without the "I'm obliged to try to sell you more" attitude that training foists upon some in Europe.  

- Supermarket packers.  Yes I know I mean New World, but it is brilliant to have someone pack your groceries. Ignore those infuriating self serve devices which have infected British supermarkets.  Far better to get a minimum wage teenager or grateful retiree to happily pack things for you.

- Well maintained roads.  I know why this is, and why it isn't like that in the UK and the US.  The more you keep politics out of decisions on road funding, the more that roads keep well maintained over everything else.  That includes signs, lines and lighting.  It is an absolute delight driving around New Zealand.

-  Seafood.  Seriously wonderful fish is available across NZ, even if at times it is a bit pricey.  However, you can't go past freshly cooked deep fried hoki or terakihi for fish and chips. Most British establishments absolutely wreck it by cooking cod in bulk so the top layer are dried out under heat lamps and the bottom drenched in fat. 

-  Bread.  Lighter, without the texture of freeze wrapped cardboard that much British mass produced bread has.  Almost all of it in NZ is far far more delicious than much of that which passes as bread in the UK.

- Ice cream.  Yes there are wonderful ice creams in Europe, but premium NZ ones are simply delightful.  I know Kapiti ice cream is Fonterra owned, but that hasn't done away with absolutely fantastic flavours.

- Scenery.  I only drove in the North Island and I have seen a lot of NZ over the years, but the one thing NZ has to offer over the UK and indeed many other countries is diverse scenery over short distances.  Driving in the UK is almost always tedious, with straight roads, few hills and little interesting scenery until you get quite remote into Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Yorkshire, Wales and the Highlands.   Natural beauty with very few others to share it with is rather special.

- Rewarewa honey.  Beats Manuka.  It's truly heavenly.

Minuses

-  Braindead television news.  I once thought it couldn't get worse, but it has.  Stop telling people what to think about a story by slanting how you describe events a certain way.  Yes, you love disasters, celebrities and sport because your tiny minds can easily grasp the concept of good vs bad, you can't grasp politics or world affairs because your frame of reference is adolescent.  Seriously, NZ would be better off if TVNZ, TV3 and Prime all abandoned national news and broadcast infomercials instead, you would all be better informed.

-  Nanny State on alcohol. Why the hell can't I buy spirits or liquours from supermarkets?  Grow up New Zealand.  Yes there are some who have major alcohol problems.  Funnily enough you don't have less of this problem than countries which sell the lot at a multiple of outlets.  Beyond that, stop taxing it to buggery.   Yes it is cheaper to buy NZ wine in the UK, figure that one out.

-  Media mispronunciation.   Are there no people who can enunciate words?  TV in particular, but also some radio is full of cringeworthy butchers of the English language, and even worse butchers of foreign place names and personal names.  Who told you Kim Jong Il is pronounced Kim Yong Il?

-  Fruit juice.   Largely non existent in NZ, as most of the market is occupied by reconstituted fructose laden concentrate.  Freshly squeezed proper juices tend only to be orange, rare is apple available as a proper juice.  I know it is price, but there is no point drinking the cheap stuff.

- Yoghurt.  The lack of variety and with premium varieties resembliny desserts rather than actual yoghurt you want to eat, is rather dire.  What's wrong with rhubarb and vanilla, what about blueberry, what about boysenberry and blackberry?  Why so much damned sugar in it?

-  The accent.  Yes I've become a snob.  It's bloody awful.  If you have aspiration, try to de-nasalise yourself, otherwise it really can make one sound like you're a friendly naive idiot.  The PM leads the annoying accent stakes, but that may well be deliberate!

-  Rip off New Zealand.  How funny for the Honey Hive to be the most expensive place to sell its goods.  The pricing of "official outlets" and tourist spots is a serious rip off, when it proves not that hard to find the same products in other stores for 25-30% cheaper.   Yes I know it feels great targeting Johnny Foreigner because you think he's rich, but he's also not stupid. 

Oddities:

-  So many travel agents? Hasn't the internet been discovered yet?

-  Retailer websites with no useful information.  Why doesn't anyone put their products and prices online?  Why doesn't anyone offer to sell things online?  This is domestic websites, there should be no international bandwidth issues.   It is almost impossible to go online "window" shopping to see who sells what at what prices.  

- Ancient cars everywhere.  The Cuba of the South Pacific.  Mitsubishi Sigmas, Ford Anglias, Holden Kingswoods, Ford Falcons (XC, XD, XE), Holden Commodores, Ford Lasers, Mazda 323s, Ford Telstars, Ford Cortinas.  Seriously, someone should organise tours for UK car enthusiasts to have a look around. 

- Mr Ed on the Te Reo Channel.  Accidentally found this one, found it hard to stop laughing when I saw Mr. Ed on the phone saying "Kia Ora Wilbur".  Something inspired about doing that.

Kim Jong Il's economic legacy

Let's test two of the great theories as to why North Korea is in poverty:

1.  North Korea has really only suffered since the end of the Cold War saw it lose markets and cheap oil.

2.  North Korea has also really only suffered due to the introduction of UN sanctions on trade with the country due to its nuclear programme.

Nonsense.  The effect of the end of the Cold War was to make things worse, but the relative decline is inbuilt in the system of rigid state socialism.

Look at this, from the Washington Post:

Source: Washington Post

Stagnation has been the norm in North Korea for 40 years.  The gap between rich and poor has been a gap between South Korea and North Korea.  From 1972 to 1987 South Korea was under the rule of a military led dictatorship and subsequently transitioned to a vibrant and very open liberal democracy.  However, South Korea's dictatorship allowed far more economic and personal freedom than North Korea.  Today the average South Korean has 20 times the income of the average North Korean, with freedoms and a way of life as distant from North Koreans as New Zealand does to Haiti.  

As the Washington Post notes.  East Germany had one-third of the per capita income of West Germany at the time of reunification.  North Korea has one-twentieth.

By contrast, South Korea is a pinup example of roaring success in economic development.  From 1953 when after the Korean War it had per capita income akin to that of Bangladesh, it is today effectively a developed country. 

Do we really need any more case studies of capitalism vs. socialism?

Kim Jong Il - A life of terror

It is difficult to exaggerate the absolute vileness of what Kim Jong Il presided over since the death of his megalomaniac father Kim Il Sung, he is perhaps only exceeded by Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Mao in sheer numbers of those murdered, but the whole superstructure of the regime is such a layer upon layer of fiction that is defies easy understanding.  Almost everything about him and his regime was a lie, the reality evasion was on such a scale that millions died of mass starvation, hundreds of thousands lived and died in prison camps, including young children and the rest of the population lived under an ever present terror of facing oblivion due either to failure of the totalitarian state to deliver food and shelter, or because it would take them away.   

Kim Jong Il was born in 1941 in the USSR by his father, a small scale anti-Japanese guerilla leader who fled Korea with his wife Kim Jong Suk after a number of small successes in repelling Japanese imperialism and its cruel rule of Korea.  In the USSR Kim Il Sung learned of Marxism-Leninism and was impressed by the order and discipline imposed by Stalin.   Kim Jong Il would have been an insignificant small boy if his father hadn't been hand picked by the Red Army and Stalin's regime to be Moscow's plant in Korea.  He was brought along whilst the Red Army marched into the northern half of Korea at the end of World War 2.  Kim Il Sung had Soviet advisors and military assistance, as he set up a Korean communist party with Soviet alignment, which initially worked with and then purged and destroyed the indigenous Korean communist movement.  His ruthlessness, friendliness to Moscow and youthful charisma saw Kim Il Sung picked to lead the new state set up by Moscow to rival the UN/US backed Republic of Korea established in the south.  The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was born, and Kim Jong Il was 7 years old.

Kim Jong Il faced several childhood issues.  One was death of his younger brother to drowning, another was death of his mother in 1949 - allegedly exacerbated when she found out about Kim Il Sung's serial adultery (the "Great Leader" title not quite appearing yet though), and then the Korean War causing Kim Il Sung to evacuate with his children and new wife to be Kim Song Ae.

The world heard absolutely nothing of Kim Jong Il till 1973.  By then he had completed school and university, and was being groomed to be the successor.  Kim Jong Il had by then gained a penchant for expensive liquor, fast cars, young pretty women (he used his father's pleasure troops to recruit pretty young girls from age 13 to be trained to please him once they reached around age 15-16, in large numbers), guns and movies.   He lived the high life, drinking heavily (Hennessy especially), smoking and partying.  He never flew, and would happily arrange execution of those who displeased him.  His movie fetish became legendary.  He led establishment of a major film studio in Pyongyang, with multiple sets for different eras and countries.  He arranged kidnapping of actors, chefs and directors of Korean descent from south Korea and Japan, he also arranged for prostitutes to be brought in from various countries including Sweden.   It is notable his father died at age 82, but he couldn't manage past 70.

Yes, 70.  He is 70, not 69.

Between 1973 and 1980 he was referred to publicly in all media and books as "the Party Center" as he led day to day administrative business for his father.  In that exercise he successfully led various purges and ensured only loyal followers progressed to support him and his father, he also helped spear the unprecedented personality cult around his father, which after 1980 was duplicated for him personally.   The personality cult saw the glorification of a vacuous national ideology called "Juche", the constructions of statues and monuments across the country, and the completion of the cultural revolution that meant virtually all songs, films, books and art were focused on glorifying Kim Il Sung, the party, the state, Juche and all that was done by them.   Everything good was because of his father and later himself.  Everything that went wrong was due to the US imperialists, the south Korean puppet clique and the Japanese.

By the 1980s, Kim Jong Il had become the Dear Leader to his father the Great Leader and both operated as a pair.  Yet Kim Jong Il's high squeaky voice meant he was largely a recluse, living the high life, whilst ordering stories and tales to be written about his exploits.   Like his father it is claimed he gave "on the spot guidance" to hundreds of sites across the country.   What he did was perpetuate a system that create possibly the biggest and longest lasting prison state in history.

North Koreans have largely lived planned lives.   There is no private ownership of land, or indeed anything other than personal possessions.  Regular re-issuing of currency destroys savings.

Overseas travel was strictly prohibited, as was travel from one's own town or village.  Internal passports strictly regulated where anyone could travel, and life beyond one's home town was available only to few.  

News media was strictly under total state control.  All media reported to the people how lucky they were to live in the country and that people worldwide envied them.  They were told that South Korea was a state of slaves where Americans raped girls and kept Koreans as servants and mistreated them, starving them.  They were told everywhere else in the world was full of crime, starvation, war and deprivation.  Satellite TV was unavailable.  Foreign broadcasts were unavailable.   Radios were banned except for locally made devices with no tuning dial so that only local signals could be picked up.   The life in North Korea in the 1980s was hermetically sealed from the world.  Foreign popular culture was unknown.  Elvis Presley, Mickey Mouse, the Beatles and almost any movies, songs, fashions and brand from elsewhere were unknown, except to the elite.

Every day was planned.  Jobs included political education every day, people were constantly told to work harder and longer and never complain, be grateful and be frugal.   Every week every adult would go to criticism sessions where they must confess their own limitations and then accuse others of the same.  Every week one would fear being made a scapegoat.  Photos of both Kims were mandatory in every home, office, school classroom and public transport vehicle.  They had to be kept in perfect clean condition or punishment would be meted out.  Destroying newspapers with their images on them was forbidden.   All children were taken from their parents several hours a day into creches to learn their first words "Kim Il Sung (and latterly Kim Jong Il) is your father".  Children taught to owe everything to the Kims, and to put loyalty to them above their parents and friends.  Taught to be snitches for the leaders.  Taught to be part of the Police State.   Red Guards from their young teens, loyalty to leader and party first, and they would be rewarded if they reported on relatives and friends who were disloyal.

Kim Jong Il was a part of that and changed nothing when his father died.   When Soviet oil and aid ceased to flow, the economy was not reformed.   It remained centrally controlled and managed, entrepreneurship remained illegal, no freedoms were granted.   As a result, he continued to maintain a policy of terror.   Individuals feared that if they were found to be disloyal, they and all their relatives would be imprisoned in gulags - slave labour camps where they would work 16 hour days, 7 days a week, eating next to nothing.   Children from babies up would be included.  Abuse, sadism and torture are rife - reports have also come out of chemical and biological weapons tests being applied to some inmates.  

Even outside the gulag system the mass starvation of the late 1990s was due entirely to the failure of the entire economic system to be productive and let people respond to demand, supply and reason.  Adopting "non-juche" farming techniques was forbidden, so millions starved, desperately trying to eat wildlife, bark, soil, weeds, whilst propaganda signs urged them to "only eat two meals a day".   Kim Jong Il ate lobster, drank liquors and remained obese.

He could have reformed his country, what he did was next to nothing.  The biggest revolution has been the introduction of a mobile phone network that pre-selected elite can use, but which is effectively allowing people to network without easy state surveillance.  He has also seen, informally, the borders become more porous, as corruption and awareness of the outside world has spread among the more privileged classes, especially as technology has slipped into the country, with very cheap CD and DVD players, and CDs, DVDs from south Korea via Chinese sources.  He stopped a military coup by raising the status of the military into the most powerful force in the country, essentially usurping the party.   

North Korea today is a military state led by a personality cult family.  Its main businesses are arms, narcotics, counterfeit currency and minerals.   Kim Jong Il visited China several times and China showed him the results of its dramatic reforms, but he was unmoved - believing that it was too risky to allow Koreans to set up their own businesses and interact freely.  The result is a dark, polluted, cold, state of terror, horror, starvation and fear.

Unlike official propaganda, and the parroted propaganda from Pyongyang's useful idiots in the Korean Friendship Association, who stick their deluded evil tongues up their figurative fundament of Kim Jong Il, he will be remembered as a short inadequate playboy murdering tyrant whose policies and approaches resulted in the deaths of millions, and suffering of tens of millions.

What is left is a country with exhausted broken infrastructure, an enormous military armed with weapons of mass destruction, unproductive agriculture, massive untapped mineral resources, a police state and a people whose lives have been wasted through ideological education and decades of lies and terror.

Reforming, modernising, freeing and re-educating this country is a monumental task.  Consider fixing East Germany to be like helping an overweight smoker to become fit and normal size, fixing North Korea is like helping a senile centenarian become an Olympic athlete with a Ph. D.

Kim Jong Il's death facts and sources UPDATES

I was driving near Taupo when I heard the news about Kim Jong Il's sudden death, and missed turning off.  Perversely you might think, I have a relationship with the DPRK, given it is the most totalitarian regime the world has ever seen - and know people there.  I studied it extensively in the 1990s and travelled there.   I am overwhelmingly joyous about his passing, but am thinking a lot about those who I know are there and who are looking for reform to come, knowing there must be change.  However, I am going to be driven nuts by reporters who are going to get a lot wrong about the place.

Let's get some points clear:

1.  Kim Jong Il was 70 NOT 69.  He was actually born in 1941 in the Soviet Union, not 1942 on "sacred" Mt. Paektu whilst his father was leading the liberation from the Japanese.  The 1942 birth year is a fabrication which appeared in the 1970s in publications.  The sole reason was to match his father, Kim Il Sung's, birth year of 1912.  So when Kim Il Sung turned 60, Kim Jong Il turned 30 etc etc.  The point of his birth in the USSR (near Khabarovsk I believe) is that Kim Il Sung had fled to the country due to the Japanese takeover, along with his mother Kim Jong Suk (who died in 1949 under circumstances that have multiple versions).

2. Kim Jong Un is expected to succeed him, but reality is likely to be quite different.  There is a significant power struggle about to happen (there was one when Kim Il Sung died as his second wife, Kim Song Ae sought to overthrow Kim Jong Il), and the list of members of the National Funeral Committee is very significant (see article here).  Kim Jong Un leads the list, number two is the rather  elderly Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly Kim Yong Nam, Choe Yong Rim is third, and is Prime Minister and an ally of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un.  Those two are close allies and expected to ensure Kim Jong Un leads.  Ri Yong Ho is number four, and is effectively now de-jure head of the military as a whole, and his ability to ensure loyalty to Kim Jong Un is likely to be critical.  At 69 he is not too old to achieve that, but his name will be one to watch.  Kim Yong-Chun is alongside him and may be expected to be a challenger as head of the army.

3.  Kim Jong Il's closest living relative is his sister Kim Kyong Hui, the most powerful woman in the country.  She may well seek to shadow Kim Jong Un because she is sole remaining issue of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Suk.  Kim Jong Il's half sibling Kim Pyong Il is not listed in the funeral committee, and was reportedly in Pyongyang earlier year because his mother- Kim Il Sung's second wife Kim Son Ae, is terminally ill.  He may seek to challenge Kim Jong Un, but has not be around in the country sufficiently to do so.   Kim Pyong Il and Kim Kyong Hui are the two people best placed to mount a civilian challenge of the leadership.

4.  North Korea is not as isolated as it once was.  The elite have mobile phones and are extensively aware of life in the outside world, with DVDs, CDs and other material circulating among the ruling classes.  Yet, the mass of the population do not have a clue, and may think the world is mourning with them.  They haven't the slightest clue of the wealth prosperity and freedom of South Korea.  Internet access is not available to anyone except a tiny elite, satellite TV is only available to that elite and in three hotels in Pyongyang, and it is a crime to own a radio that can receive foreign broadcasts.

5.  He died TWO DAYS AGO, which is astonishing.  It is telling that so much time passed compared to news of the death of his father.  Kim Jong Un will have sought to ensure he was not directly threatened.  However, it will be far more interesting in coming months.

The latest report is that the country is under curfew, under actual visible martial law.

If you want the most useful coverage of events then you will find it hard to beat the following sites:

- Daily NK - Providing the most regular, up to date and informed coverage of events.  In English, but originally Korean.   If you use any single source to follow events in coming weeks, use this.

- North Korea Econ Watch - Russian academic Andrei Lankov's excellent blog on events in the DPRK, with many sources of those who do business, travel and visit there.  Lankov is one of the world's leading DPRK watchers, with some fluency in Korean, as well as English and Russian, and a long history of visiting the place over many years.

- North Korea Leadership Watch - Self explanatory blog by Michael Madden, includes a great Kim Jong Il family tree

North Korea's own state monopoly news agency (no others allowed, absolutely no free speech or independent media or publishing of any kind) the Korean Central News Agency is here in English.

North Korea's international radio station, Voice of Korea in English

More will be added in coming days

UPDATE 1:  No foreign delegations allowed to Kim Jong Il funeral or for mourning.   Big questions regarding existing Western tour groups in the country.

UPDATE 2: TV3's Nightline coverage (New Zealand) is sloppy.  First, Kim Jong Il has NOT been the "Dear Leader" for over 10 years, but rather "Leader".  Secondly, the "military first" policy (Songun) is not "60 years old".  It dates from 1995 although is claimed to have arisen in 1961.

UPDATE 3: Daily NK is clearly managing to get unofficial reports from the DPRK presumably through a mix of sources.  Markets closed, night curfews, people prohibited for being outside.  Particular issues in the town of Musan.

Norway's butter shortage and "food security"

This SHOULD be a no-brainer.

Norway has adopted the similar kind of nationalist/socialist environmentalist claptrap supported by the Greens.  The idea that trade and agricultural policy should be focused on local supply and "food sovereignty", which of course is just another word for protectionism and rent seeking by farmers.

Norwegian farmers get a lot of that.  Around NZ$400 million a year to Norwegian dairy farmers in price, income and other subsidies.  For that they can't even produce enough to meet domestic demand.  To top that off there is a 29% tariff on imported butter, so Norway already prices imported butter away from its market. 

Yet that's not all.  You might fairly assume subsidising dairy farmers might mean there is more production than would otherwise be the case, and that the lack of demand shouldn't mean that tariffs get in the way of imports.  You're right.  Norway also restricts imports to a quota.  Only 575 tonnes of butter can be imported under its quota with a tariff of 60% on that.

You see the 29% tariff is actually the general tariff it applies, which is meaningless because of the quota.  If there was no quota, the tariff would be 29%, but in actual fact Norway restricts imports of butter and then taxes it.

If there were New Zealand journalists worth their oxygen they would be off to Norway with the Minister of Foreign Trade suggesting a free trade agreement between NZ and Norway to include dairy products (which Norway wont accept, but the media there might raise questions about its ridiculous agricultural trade policies).

There is no need for any country to have a "butter shortage".  After all there isn't a sock shortage or a TV shortage or a light bulb shortage is there?