Asia Times: A bad hair day


	October 18, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
A bad hair day
By Aidan Forster-Carter

If communism was good for anything, it was jokes - though there don't seem to be many in North Korea. So here's a Polish one from way back, about their neighbors. A Pole and a Czech, both in the footwear business, are sent on a sales mission to a remote part of Africa. They arrive, inspect, and cable home. The Pole wires: "Big mistake. Cancel order. No-one wears shoes." The Czech's message: "Great opportunity! Double order! No-one wears shoes!"

The subject of business opportunities in North Korea tends to prompt a similar divergence of views. In a way both are right. As the last sizable population - 23 million or so - on the planet virtually untouched by globalization, the potential opportunities are immense. I recall a Unilever manager in Seoul dreaming of the day when every woman in the North will pack as many cosmetics in her handbag as her Southern sisters. (An average US$100 worth, since you ask. South Korea is the world's sixth largest market.)

When the first North Koreans came down to Seoul for Red Cross talks in the 1970s, with journalists in tow, makeup was one of the capitalist excesses they affected not to like. The Pyongyang Times poured scorn on these doll-like creatures with their "goblin-like phiz". Phiz! I hadn't heard that word used since Charles Dickens, and it was old then. (It's a jocular abbreviation for physiognomy, ie, face.) One day, I really want to see the dictionary they use in Pyongyang. An antique dealer might pay good money for it.

They blamed the Yankee imperialists, of course - when don't they? - for all this face paint. Another thing that got their goat was "mass color". That had me puzzled. North Koreans like bold and cheerful hues - as seen in the brightly-colored clothes worn by young kids before they graduate to school uniforms, and the drab vinalon worn by adults. Then it clicked. They meant mascara: evidently an unknown concept.

And don't forget the guys. Several years ago I was at a meeting in London for a visiting delegation of North Korean economics teachers who had been brought over by the UN Development Program to learn about capitalism. There were a dozen grey middle-aged men whose faces gave little away and who said nothing - they didn't speak English, except for a bright young interpreter whose demeanor was much more open.

As the speaker droned on interminably about British constitutional affairs - the House of Lords puzzled our translator - what I couldn't help noticing was the hair. Now, as a bearded hippy type for whom personal grooming has never been a high priority - the only student evaluation I still recall from my teaching days was the one that just said tersely, "Change your tailor." - it's rare that I would pay any heed to such trivia. But this you couldn't miss. Looking round the table, most of the older North Koreans had truly terrible hair: greasy, full of dandruff. Unilever, they need you! Only the young guy looked half way presentable. They'd only just arrived in the country so maybe they used the trip - a rare treat - to stock up on shampoo and stuff.

Which brings me back to what this article was going to be about before I got sidetracked. (For which I don't apologize. Anecdotes help the medicine go down, and also tell their own stories.) The point is that delegations such as this one from North Korea have been coming to take a peek at capitalism for almost as long as I can remember. A decade, at least. And for even longer the equivalent of the apocryphal Pole and Czech have been going into the hermit kingdom to check out the lie of the land for business.

Recently the pace of such reconnaissance has quickened. The latest to boldly go where - well, actually quite a few have gone before, as of October 16 - is a 12-strong team of my compatriots from the British Consultants Bureau; hot on the heels of a 25-member delegation from the Singapore Confederation of Industry, which visited from October 1-9. South Korea's unification ministry, which keeps tabs on such matters, has clocked nine inward and 13 outbound business missions to and from North Korea so far this year, 30 percent more than last year. Senders include not only Pyongyang's old pals Russia and China, but also the European Union, the Netherlands, Germany and three separate teams from Australia - one of which was described, intriguingly, as a "mine and infra-investigation team". Tunnelling is already quite a DPRK speciality.

Outbound the range is wider, including the Asian region. In April alone, North Korean teams touted for investment from Taiwan, which of course has no official relations with Pyongyang, and negotiated to buy rice from Thailand (it would help if they paid for the last lot). DPRK delegations even visited the US, for economic seminars and to study farming, livestock and flood prevention. All eminently practical, like the team that went to Japan in June to look at potato cultivation and processing technology. (As readers may recall, Kim Jong-il has great faith in the humble spud; his subjects are less keen on this unfamiliar tuber.) Other delegations sought trade and investment from Spain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Brunei and Indonesia.

All this is, of course, good. But it has all happened before. Preliminary scouting in and by North Korea has a long history. Yet most of those who go in, just the once, never sign a deal - and never come back. The next Pyongyang Watch will explore the reasons for this reluctance by foreign business to take the plunge.

NEXT: When the scouting stops

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