As noted by many of the other comments, this is a fascinating article in so many different respects, but the most interesting take-away for me personally is a little detail that shows just how far the ripples cast from a seemingly small action can reach.
If one day, decades ago, a teenaged boy's co-worker and friend hadn't wanted to live like "normal" folks instead of scroungers, and shared a sushi dinner with his friend, Dennis Rodman probably wouldn't have ended up visiting the DPRK decades later, causing all the resulting foofaraw. But for that one little choice, a subsequent event that at least flashed across the awareness of most of the First World, and who knows how much of the rest of it, wouldn't have happened.
It's not necessarily something of geo-political consequence, but if that's not the notional "butterfly flapping its wings in China", I'm not sure what is.
In some way, the butterfly effect highlights that North Korea is in meta-stable state, and relatively minor events on few select people can effect its political course. In the modern world, much less is governed by outliers of chance, simply by virtue of many more agents involved.
Here's how I see it: either Fujimoto was predisposed to a sushi career (his sushi destiny guaranteed, though with uncertain timing) or Fujimoto would have been equally amazed by any old thing his rich friend showed him. There's also the whole question of: out of all the sushi chefs in Japan, why Fujimoto?
But back to the dichotomy: I have no reason to believe Fujimoto was predestined for sushi. On the other hand, I would be shocked to know that the rich kid, though he couldn't have known at the time, held direct power over Fujimoto's future. What if the kid wanted to play soccer? Or play Pacman in an arcade? Or launch bottle rockets? Could Fujimoto have been equally good at those things?
It's a wonderful life, isn't it? Personally I find complex systems of cause and effect to be inherently fascinating. We basically don't understand how they work, at least not in a rigorous way. People are working on models, for example in systems biology, but it's early work.
Apparently Fujimoto really liked sushi. Combine that with the fact that living in Japan, you're going to be able to eat sushi at some point in your life, it was only a matter of time until he found out he really liked sushi and wanted to become a sushi-chef. For all we know, there had been several "close calls" before this one, his parents maybe wanting to celebrate a special occasion with sushi, but then changing their minds. If his friend hadn't treated them, he would've probably had other opportunities to taste sushi and find out the same thing.
I don't normally upvote non-tech things on HN, but that was one of the most fascinating articles I have read in awhile. I started to idly read it, but immediately become engrossed.
You might like the book "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea." There's quite a few jaw dropping stories from people who defected from NK. It's such a mysterious country, I am completely fascinated by it.
It was written by Adam Johnson, an English Professor at Stanford who just won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for a book, not coincidentally, inspired by North Korea.
I read this in a print version of GQ (call me old fashioned), and as it turns out, they come out with pretty fascinating topics regularly. I think the urban explorers article or coast guard rescue a few years back piqued my interest.
Agree with others here, a very captivating read. Couldn't stop reading once I started.
The personality of the protagonist is interesting to think about. Disturbed individual or hero? Both? We are presented with his actions, wonder what was going on in his head. Left his wife and kids to live for 3 years in a strange country. Did it again for 10 years. Remarried there to someone who doesn't speak his language. Had other kids. Left them.
A hero because, I guess there are few who would do that. Provided an interesting insight into the inner circle (but I don't the sacrifice for humanity's lack of information on Kim's family is what drove him). Very disturbed person as well. The childhood probably left some pretty large scars on him. Abandoning his family many times over is disgusting to think about, the scars it will leave on his children are no less harsh than those left on him by his father.
No, just yet another human being with contradictions, light-heartedness, courage, blindness, dreams, and sins.
Just a unique destiny. One should refrain from judging him. Who are we to judge a Japanese old man who crossed unadvertently the path of an ugly dictator, and managed to survive, and became half-addicted?
I have a hard time calling anybody who could leave his family like that a hero. He wasn't doing it to better their circumstances; he was doing it to satisfy himself.
After eight years in captivity, she made a life-or-death escape from her guards after being sent to Vienna to promote Kim's latest film.
Could someone explain how Austria permitted slaves to be held within its borders? Is this some sort of diplomatic privilege? This would be 1986 [1].
edit: Or a parallel (?) situation, Cuban athletes "escaping" from government minders inside the USA (2002 [2]). What power do foreign government agents have in these situations?
"What power do foreign government agents have in these situations?"
Guns and strong arms, I can only assume..
"Could someone explain how Austria permitted slaves to be held within its borders?"
I agree with Dominik that that is a rather offensive question. Ofcourse it doesn't, even Kim himself did not believe she was a slave still, of course she was and felt that way.
There's only one way to assert that you are not a slave, and that is to test your freedom.
Hmm? The eight years in captivity was in North Korea. She convinced her minders to allow her to visit Austria, and made her escape after soon as she could once she landed.
Elsewhere in the story the translator had a Dominican passport. It seems likely they traveled using forged documents and first, to Japan. Kind of like how Americans go to Mexico in order to get to Cuba and vice versa.
Did the Austrians realize she was a slave? Did she realize it herself, for that matter? Everyone has stereotypes when it comes to slavery, and it's actually pretty hard to detect it, especially when the victim has been institutionalized as I can imagine this woman was.
You must be seriously brain damaged to ask such a question. I am from Austria and I can assure you that there are no diplomatic privileges to hold slaves in my country.
The sushi chef was leaving his apartment when he noticed the stranger outside.
He could tell by the man's suit—black and badly made—that he was North Korean.
Right away, the chef was nervous. Even in his midsixties, the chef is a
formidable man: He has thick shoulders, a broad chest; the rings on
his strong hands would one day have to be cut off. But he'd long since
quit wearing his bulletproof vest, and the last time a North Korean made
the journey to visit him in Japan, a decade ago, he was there to kill him.
Incredibly well-written first paragraph, it's been a while since I've read such an engrossing opening to an article.
He probably realized early on that it wasn't in his best interests to, and so just turned that part of his brain off. Curiosity seems like a dangerous thing in North Korea.
I was wondering about the same thing. Could it be a self protecting strategy? In the article, it mentioned that the Kims see him as an outsider, and by continuing speaking to them via a translator, it kept the sense of him being an outside for the 20+ years.
Can someone explain the situation that started this?
"he signed a one-year contract to teach sushi-making skills to young chefs in Pyongyang"
Was this just in the classified ads? I thought North Korea was closed off from the world and Japan an enemy. Was this a low point in military tensions?
Similarly what kind of flights went between Japan and DPRK?
There's a huge North Korean community in Japan, which are a major source of funds to North Korea. Until North Korea confessed to abducting Japanese citizens c. 2002, there was even a ferry that traveled regularly between the two.
The main catch is that Japan's "North Koreans" may be internally registered as such, but they're actually descended from people who were in Japan before 1948 and for most part have never even been to North Korea. This is all further complicated by the fact that Japan doesn't actually recognize North Korea as a state and holds on to the fiction that South Korea is the sole legitimate country on the entire peninsula. Wikipedia has a capsule summary:
I am guessing this was during the reign of Kim Il-sun when the country was apparently faring a bit better, and there were less sanctions etc. Also, did everybody in USA stop consuming sushi during war with Japan? Was it forbidden after the Pearl Harbor?
Was anyone else surprised by the quality of food that the elites were/are eating? It doesn't surprise me that they had tons of expensive possessions and services, but I would've thought the perishable nature of food would make getting the ingredients for gourmet cuisine nearly impossible!
OT, but ... I absolutely love to read articles like this one, yet I'm not interested in subscribing to GQ or buying anyone's full book. I wish there was a tip jar below each long-form article. :(
Kim Jong-il reveled in his enjoyment of sushi!? Does that strike anyone else as just ... distasteful, even by his standards? That would be like Japan opening up a McDonald's right where one of the A-bombs went off.
This article is fantastic. I did not like the fact that the sushi chef was a scumbag who created families in different countries and abandoned them which the author called out. He even complicated doing it a third time at the end of the article due to his greediness. I hope he does go back to North Korea and runs out of luck.
[+] [-] rosser|13 years ago|reply
If one day, decades ago, a teenaged boy's co-worker and friend hadn't wanted to live like "normal" folks instead of scroungers, and shared a sushi dinner with his friend, Dennis Rodman probably wouldn't have ended up visiting the DPRK decades later, causing all the resulting foofaraw. But for that one little choice, a subsequent event that at least flashed across the awareness of most of the First World, and who knows how much of the rest of it, wouldn't have happened.
It's not necessarily something of geo-political consequence, but if that's not the notional "butterfly flapping its wings in China", I'm not sure what is.
[+] [-] varjag|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arh68|13 years ago|reply
But back to the dichotomy: I have no reason to believe Fujimoto was predestined for sushi. On the other hand, I would be shocked to know that the rich kid, though he couldn't have known at the time, held direct power over Fujimoto's future. What if the kid wanted to play soccer? Or play Pacman in an arcade? Or launch bottle rockets? Could Fujimoto have been equally good at those things?
[+] [-] foobarbazqux|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] relix|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foofaraw|13 years ago|reply
Ha! I never realized that was actually a word.
[+] [-] Taylorious|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avgarrison|13 years ago|reply
edit: a word
[+] [-] amartinsu13|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joyeuse6701|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnautics|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PuercoPop|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|13 years ago|reply
The personality of the protagonist is interesting to think about. Disturbed individual or hero? Both? We are presented with his actions, wonder what was going on in his head. Left his wife and kids to live for 3 years in a strange country. Did it again for 10 years. Remarried there to someone who doesn't speak his language. Had other kids. Left them.
A hero because, I guess there are few who would do that. Provided an interesting insight into the inner circle (but I don't the sacrifice for humanity's lack of information on Kim's family is what drove him). Very disturbed person as well. The childhood probably left some pretty large scars on him. Abandoning his family many times over is disgusting to think about, the scars it will leave on his children are no less harsh than those left on him by his father.
[+] [-] gbog|13 years ago|reply
No, just yet another human being with contradictions, light-heartedness, courage, blindness, dreams, and sins.
Just a unique destiny. One should refrain from judging him. Who are we to judge a Japanese old man who crossed unadvertently the path of an ugly dictator, and managed to survive, and became half-addicted?
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vwinsyee|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihero
[+] [-] uvdiv|13 years ago|reply
Could someone explain how Austria permitted slaves to be held within its borders? Is this some sort of diplomatic privilege? This would be 1986 [1].
edit: Or a parallel (?) situation, Cuban athletes "escaping" from government minders inside the USA (2002 [2]). What power do foreign government agents have in these situations?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choi_Eun-hee
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cuban_soccer_players_w...
[+] [-] tinco|13 years ago|reply
Guns and strong arms, I can only assume..
"Could someone explain how Austria permitted slaves to be held within its borders?"
I agree with Dominik that that is a rather offensive question. Ofcourse it doesn't, even Kim himself did not believe she was a slave still, of course she was and felt that way.
There's only one way to assert that you are not a slave, and that is to test your freedom.
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[+] [-] oneiric|13 years ago|reply
"he signed a one-year contract to teach sushi-making skills to young chefs in Pyongyang"
Was this just in the classified ads? I thought North Korea was closed off from the world and Japan an enemy. Was this a low point in military tensions?
Similarly what kind of flights went between Japan and DPRK?
[+] [-] jpatokal|13 years ago|reply
The main catch is that Japan's "North Koreans" may be internally registered as such, but they're actually descended from people who were in Japan before 1948 and for most part have never even been to North Korea. This is all further complicated by the fact that Japan doesn't actually recognize North Korea as a state and holds on to the fiction that South Korea is the sole legitimate country on the entire peninsula. Wikipedia has a capsule summary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongryon
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