Boaz Arad, an Israeli ex-journalist who is now a photographer/videographer living in Berlin, has tweeted about his experience speaking with North Korea Foreign Ministry officials ten years ago.
When he asks them what’s the beef with Israel, the response is quite unexpected…and remarkable.
The following is a loose translation based off his tweets:
Ten years ago, I came to Pyongyang to cover for Yedioth Ahronoth the largest military parade in North Korean history.
We crowded, journalists and photographers, in Kim Il-sung Square as tens of thousands of soldiers passed us in coordinated steps, followed by tanks and trucks with ballistic missiles, in a scene as if pulled from a film by Lenny Riefenstahl. Above us, on a porch, Kim Jong-il waved at his weeping subjects. Beside him stood Regent Kim Jong-un.
In the evening we sat in the hotel restaurant where we were staying in Pyongyang, and drank not bad North Korean beers with local Foreign Ministry officials attached to us on a watchdog standard. As a foreigner in North Korea – and certainly as a foreign journalist – it is impossible to take even one step without close supervision of the country’s security and propaganda mechanisms.
Our supervisors spoke excellent English, and we took the opportunity and the alcohol to break some distance. “Tell me,” I turned to one of them, “what is your story with Israel?”
Israel, perceived as an ally of American imperialists, has no ties to North Korea – although there have been rumors in the past, including a failed attempt in the early 1990s to forge an economic-political deal with Pyongyang that was mainly Israeli aid in developing North Korea’s gold mines in exchange for arms sales. To countries hostile to Israel.
North Korea does not recognize Israel, has allowed the PLO to train in its territory, and has provided and still supplies military and nuclear and nuclear weapons to Iran and other hostile countries.
In the days before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, North Korea sent a North Korean MiG squadron to Suez to help Egypt prepare for battle. On the first day of the war, there was an air-to-air battle between the Israeli Air Force pilots and a North Korean MiG pilot who was eventually accidentally shot down as a result of a “friendly fire” by an Egyptian anti-aircraft battery.
The North Korean supervisor put his bottle of beer on the table, smiled and said he “can not talk about politics.”
I insisted.
“There is no story,” he said. “Except for what happened in 1966.”
He must be referring to the Six Day War and confused the year, I thought. I fixed it. He smiled again. “1966,” he said again, taking another sip from the beer.
In July ’66, the North Korean soccer team presented its life in the World Cup held in England. The underdogs of the tournament surprised everyone, sent Italy home, and managed to reach the quarterfinals against Portugal. After half an hour of play it already seemed that the North Koreans were making history. The result was 3-0 to their credit.
Then Eusebio woke up. Before the end of the half, he shook the North Korean network twice. In the 56th minute he scored again and equalized the result. Three minutes later he scored the fourth, and ten minutes before the end of the game he sent an accurate header to Jose Torres that sealed an incredible victory for Portugal: 5-3. North Korea’s miraculous Cinderella story at the World Cup was over.
“And how does all this relate to Israel?” I asked.
“The judge,” said a North Korean Foreign Ministry official, “was an Israeli.”
In North Korea, it turns out, it is not thought that it was Eusebio who robbed them of the victory. The judge, of course, was the one to blame for the loss. Fate wanted, and the one who held the whistle in that fateful game was the late Israeli football referee Menachem Ashkenazi.
The interest in the national consciousness of the North Koreans is so deeply burned, that when they want to curse a referee at football games in the local league, they are not interested in his mother’s well-being – they simply shout at him that he is an “Israeli referee.” In Korean it sounds like this: “Ai-su-ra-al-shim-pan-wen”. If you are popping in to visit Pyongyang, do not talk to them about football.
As I said, remarkable.
