to me
06:35
Dear Sejin,
It is admirable that you are trying to organize visit(s) to the DPRK for groups of Australians interested in peace on the Korean peninsula. Not only does AFSC advocate for more people-to-people and similar engagement activities as steps towards reducing conflict, but I think the North Korean side is receptive to the kind of tourist visit/study tour such as you propose.
To answer your questions, first, visiting AFSC partner farms is a great idea, and one we have discussed with our Korean partners on occasion in the past. Unfortunately, DPRK bureaucratic obstacles being what they are, actually doing so would be a challenge. However, I would certainly be willing to try to get it arranged. Yes, it would be possible to visit a farm on a day trip – the best plan would be to try to arrange to spend about 3 -4 hours, including lunch on the farm.
I would suggest you ask about
1] Kobi Farm, which is in Kandong County, about 40 Km east from PY center, but still in the city limits. Another suggestion would be
2] Ryu Hyon farm, also just inside the PY city limits, but south, in Ryokpho District.
It would be possible to visit both in one day. AFSC just finished cooperation with both of these farms, after years of partnership, because we felt that the farms had made sustainable improvements and no longer needed AFSC support. Given our long partnership, I think the authorities would deem both farms “trustworthy” enough to host foreigners.
The big obstacle in arranging a visit is that the people/organization hosting your visit would not be the same as the one that hosts AFSC. You could ask if our partner group, the Committee for Solidarity with the Worlds’ People (a Party organization) could be allowed to negotiate the visit. To make this work, I suggest a donation would need to be made to the farm(s).
I assume your hosting group is whatever organization is responsible for Australians – I’m not sure what that would be. And yes, they would not be the same groups that arrange tours (a different silo!). You might want to try to get yourself positioned as a “people to people” peace delegation from Australia, and see if you could get invited as something other than a tour group.
Travel insurance – we do have travel insurance when we go to the DPRK, and for our last two visits AFSC actually got extra emergency evacuation insurance for us. We didn’t think that was necessary, but you should consider the issue of some sort of group insurance as just a best practice when organizing a group of this sort.
I hope this is helpful! With best regards, Linda
…
From: Sejin Pak Gmail
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 2:33 AM
To: Linda Lewis
Subject: Fwd: North Korea Study Tour
Dear Linda,
You would have heard about me but allow me to briefly introduce myself.
My name is Sejin Pak. I attend the Adelaide Meeting in South Australia. I am ethnic Korean and a retired academic who is interested in doing some volunteer work in North Korea.
I was born in South Korea (1948) and my family migrated to Brazil in 1964, to Canada in 1969. I came to Australia in 1992 and have stayed here since then. I have some relatives in North Korea. My grandfather was burried in the Patriots' Cemetery in Pyongyang. My mother (deceased in 2014) used to be a long time veteran of the unification movement among the ethnic Koreans in North America. My sister Vana Kim was one of the organiser of Women Cross DMZ in 2016. I visited North Korea twice in 2017 searching for some project on North Korae that I want to engage myself.
I gave a talk about North Korea in the Yearly Meeting in Australia, and tried to recruit some Australian friends to visit North Korea with an aim of getting Australian friends interested in the issues of peace in the Korean peninsula and engaging with North Korea. The work done by AFSC about which I have read all along is a concreate model for what the Australian Quakers can do.
The first step for me is to lead a groups of about ten Australian friends to visit North Korea, not as a formal delegation, but a part tourism and a part study tour.
It will be a packaged tour of 7 nights and 8 day modelled after the one by an American peace delegation from Answer Coalition.http://www.answercoalition.org/
You may have seen this, but I attach their schedule (5 pics).
To make planning simple, I would use this schedule and modify slightly to suit our purpose as a study tour. The study tour part is to examine some NGO work in North Korea. The most obvious candidate is the AFSC project in North Korea. It would be useful to spend a half a day to visit one or two collective farms associated with AFSC, and this is the part directly related to you.
I would like first to ask you what you think about the idea of the Australian Quaker group visiting one or two collective farms associated to the AFSC work in NK.
The big obstacle in arranging a visit is that the people/organization hosting your visit would not be the same as the one that hosts AFSC. You could ask if our partner group, the Committee for Solidarity with the Worlds’ People (a Party organization) could be allowed to negotiate the visit. To make this work, I suggest a donation would need to be made to the farm(s).
I assume your hosting group is whatever organization is responsible for Australians – I’m not sure what that would be. And yes, they would not be the same groups that arrange tours (a different silo!). You might want to try to get yourself positioned as a “people to people” peace delegation from Australia, and see if you could get invited as something other than a tour group.
Travel insurance – we do have travel insurance when we go to the DPRK, and for our last two visits AFSC actually got extra emergency evacuation insurance for us. We didn’t think that was necessary, but you should consider the issue of some sort of group insurance as just a best practice when organizing a group of this sort.
I hope this is helpful! With best regards, Linda
…
From: Sejin Pak Gmail
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2018 2:33 AM
To: Linda Lewis
Subject: Fwd: North Korea Study Tour
Dear Linda,
You would have heard about me but allow me to briefly introduce myself.
My name is Sejin Pak. I attend the Adelaide Meeting in South Australia. I am ethnic Korean and a retired academic who is interested in doing some volunteer work in North Korea.
I was born in South Korea (1948) and my family migrated to Brazil in 1964, to Canada in 1969. I came to Australia in 1992 and have stayed here since then. I have some relatives in North Korea. My grandfather was burried in the Patriots' Cemetery in Pyongyang. My mother (deceased in 2014) used to be a long time veteran of the unification movement among the ethnic Koreans in North America. My sister Vana Kim was one of the organiser of Women Cross DMZ in 2016. I visited North Korea twice in 2017 searching for some project on North Korae that I want to engage myself.
I gave a talk about North Korea in the Yearly Meeting in Australia, and tried to recruit some Australian friends to visit North Korea with an aim of getting Australian friends interested in the issues of peace in the Korean peninsula and engaging with North Korea. The work done by AFSC about which I have read all along is a concreate model for what the Australian Quakers can do.
The first step for me is to lead a groups of about ten Australian friends to visit North Korea, not as a formal delegation, but a part tourism and a part study tour.
It will be a packaged tour of 7 nights and 8 day modelled after the one by an American peace delegation from Answer Coalition.http://www.answercoalition.org/
You may have seen this, but I attach their schedule (5 pics).
To make planning simple, I would use this schedule and modify slightly to suit our purpose as a study tour. The study tour part is to examine some NGO work in North Korea. The most obvious candidate is the AFSC project in North Korea. It would be useful to spend a half a day to visit one or two collective farms associated with AFSC, and this is the part directly related to you.
I would like first to ask you what you think about the idea of the Australian Quaker group visiting one or two collective farms associated to the AFSC work in NK.
Secondly, a question about the location of the two farms: Whether two (or one) farm(s) can be visited from Pyongyang in half a day. I need to give the name and place of the farm to the contact person who will mediate between our group and the relevant ministry.
---
I was told that the ministry (?) that handles a group like us is not the one that handles tourism. Do you have any helpful comment on this point?
---
Another half day, not in the Answer Collaition schedule, is to be used to have an opportunity to meet some university professors for question and answer session.
Normally the mediating person that I mentioned above runs a one person travel agency called Glocal Encounters in Beijing. Her name is Ms Chung Ok Chung. She is an American citizen of Korean background. Because of the prohibition to travel to NK for America citizens, she moved back to the US.
She says that she can still do the mediating job. Normally, moreover, she accompanies the travelling group as a guide as well as an interpreter. She says I can play that role.
It is not yet clear who is definitely joining this trip, but one person asked me about travel insurance, a matter about which I never thought about. I would not bother with travel insurance especially when visiting NK. But I did ask about travel insurance to Ms Chung on behalf of the person who raised this issue. The result was that I did not get any reply from her for several months. From this experience, I conclude that travel insurance is not priority to most travellers to North Korea. But I would like to hear what you understand about this matter.
Our Australian Quaker group trip is loosely scheduled for October. I am contemplating about joining another trip to NK that my sister is organising. That trip may end up being in October too, so I will have to arrange the two trips seperate in time but till doable.
Thank you for listening.
To summirise my questions:
1] whether the Australian group visiting the collective farm (one of two?) is a good idea? Doable in half a day?
2] the name and location of the two farms
3] travel insurance
----------------
Any other comments are welcome.
In friendship,
Sejin
Adelaide,
South Australia
---
I was told that the ministry (?) that handles a group like us is not the one that handles tourism. Do you have any helpful comment on this point?
---
Another half day, not in the Answer Collaition schedule, is to be used to have an opportunity to meet some university professors for question and answer session.
Normally the mediating person that I mentioned above runs a one person travel agency called Glocal Encounters in Beijing. Her name is Ms Chung Ok Chung. She is an American citizen of Korean background. Because of the prohibition to travel to NK for America citizens, she moved back to the US.
She says that she can still do the mediating job. Normally, moreover, she accompanies the travelling group as a guide as well as an interpreter. She says I can play that role.
It is not yet clear who is definitely joining this trip, but one person asked me about travel insurance, a matter about which I never thought about. I would not bother with travel insurance especially when visiting NK. But I did ask about travel insurance to Ms Chung on behalf of the person who raised this issue. The result was that I did not get any reply from her for several months. From this experience, I conclude that travel insurance is not priority to most travellers to North Korea. But I would like to hear what you understand about this matter.
Our Australian Quaker group trip is loosely scheduled for October. I am contemplating about joining another trip to NK that my sister is organising. That trip may end up being in October too, so I will have to arrange the two trips seperate in time but till doable.
Thank you for listening.
To summirise my questions:
1] whether the Australian group visiting the collective farm (one of two?) is a good idea? Doable in half a day?
2] the name and location of the two farms
3] travel insurance
----------------
Any other comments are welcome.
In friendship,
Sejin
Adelaide,
South Australia
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