Yesterday I spoke to the PM program on Radio National for a follow up on Google’s WiFi privacy debacle, and have spoken to a few other media outlets as well. No doubt there’s a lot of interest in the story because of Google’s household name and seemingly unstoppable rise towards digital dominance. The “don’t be evil” motto is nice and simple, but it also means a good story is in the offing every time Google does stray to the dark side. Has the company done some evil here?

The answer to this question is a little nuanced. On the one hand, I don’t believe Google have deliberately done something sinister and the issue has been widely mischaracterised in the media. On the other hand, Google clearly screwed up and have to face the consequences, even the legal ones.

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As I mentioned before, one of the surprises in visiting North Korea was how the cult of personality based around the Kims was even more severe than I expected. President-for-eternity Kim Il Sung’s smiling chubby face was everywhere, including the sides of buildings, numerous shrines and mosaics, and upon the left breast of every North Korean citizen over the age of 15. (When we asked what happens if you lose your Kim badge, we were told it would never happen, nobody would be so careless.)

Other interesting indications of the magnitude of the cult were the bowling alley that had, under perspex, a bowling ball once admired by Kim Il Sung; the giant monument; the Mausoleum itself; and the hilarious Museum of Metro Construction, nearly as elaborate as the metro itself, detailing the many strokes of Kim genius that brought the metro into existence.

Officially, of course, the Kims are humble men; the various enormous and expensive monuments are “demanded” by the people or are simply the “will” of the people. The Arch of Triumph even has a poem to Kim Il Sung composed by “the people”. Thus is it not surprising that the media, that is to say the voice of the people, also has a Kim fixation. Sadly, I do not speak Korean and can’t fully appreciate the Korean domestic media, but luckily there is a weekly English language publication, the Pyongyang Times, and I eagerly read a few back-issues. It’s transparent propaganda that makes Murdoch look like an amateur, but with the folksy feel of a small local rag; it’s like Pravda meets the Port Fairy Gazette.

Here are some representative highlights. Sample below, or view this Flickr photoset with descriptions/comments.

Much has been written and said about the Labor Government’s plan to censor Australia’s Internet. The plan, which involves a Government blacklist of web sites that all Australian Internet service providers would be required to block, has been criticised for its ineffectiveness, free speech risks and technical difficulties. However, while there has been some moralising, there has been little serious debate about the filter’s moral implications.

The Prime Minister injected morality into the discussion on Tuesday when answering a skeptical question about the filter, saying that the Internet may present technical challenges to censorship, “but the underpinning moral question, I think, is exactly the same.” If it’s not allowed in a cinema, she argued, the change in medium does not change the underpinning moral issue. But what, then, exactly is the moral question?

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Note: I also wrote a short piece for Crikey on the subject yesterday.

I returned to China a few days ago after a week in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Every minute of the trip was fascinating, and I have many new insights into the place that I would never have gotten reading the news media. I saw things and experienced many incidents which were funny, disturbing and impressive. It was certainly unlike any place I have ever visited.

Here are a few brief initial thoughts, which I will expand on in the coming days.

Impressions of Pyongyang and the countryside

Pyongyang is a city of some 3 million people, and is well built-up at least in comparison to a typical Australian city. Apartment buildings are everywhere, uniform in style and often topped with a gigantic propaganda message reminding the populace of some crucial fact or duty – “Korea will prevail!”.

The city has an extraordinary number of enormous monuments and monumental buildings – political assemblies, museums, squares, memorials. The size and scale of these was impressive. However, the city did not feel crowded. It certainly did not feel like a bustling Asian capital. The main freeway out of town, at parts a 10-lane road, had only the occasional vehicle ambling along, dwarfed by the enormous thoroughfare. The scale of all this highly unnecessary construction would be impressive in any country, but is staggering in a nation as poor as North Korea. Much of the main construction, such as the mausoleum, was constructed during years of famine.

The central district of the city is reasonably small – though there are hundreds of apartment buildings and dozens of enormous national monuments, it felt like we only had to drive 10 minutes in any direction to reach the countryside. There, every square inch of flat land was given over to cultivation.

I only noticed one brief power outage while I was there, though at night the city was pretty dimly lit by our standards.

Life in North Korea

Most of what one reads about North Korea is very negative. This doesn’t mean it’s true, or necessarily even one-sided, but it can distort one’s view of what the daily life must be like. For instance, I didn’t expect to go to an amusement park in Pyongyang that had lots of happy families enjoying the rides. (I went on a few and they were excellent, better than what Luna Park has to offer.) North Koreans focus on their daily lives and family relationships as much as anybody, and the whole day isn’t given over to ceaseless labor and political brainwashing.

With that qualification, I can say that the DPRK is an incredibly regimented society. Almost everybody I saw was in uniform. The city didn’t look crowded, except when a rally was in progress, and I saw quite a few of those. The city is gearing up for celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers’ Party, and rehearsals, exhortations and meetings were constantly in progress, with thousands upon thousands of city residents lined up in ranks and files to listen or practice.

Outside the city, red flags marked the locations where work units were working in the fields or on constructions sites. Every North Korean has a place in a work unit, which makes one wonder how an enemy spy could possibly infiltrate the country. In the DPRK everybody has a place and knows it.

The DPRK worldview

The convention wisdom would have it that North Koreans are told they live in the most prosperous nation on earth, thanks to the wisdom of their great leaders. This is not the case – they know they are doing it hard, and that Westerners and South Koreans are doing much better. The rationing, shortages and hard work North Koreans experience is of course not attributed to mismanagement, but to the country’s wartime footing.

North Korea is like Blitz-era Britain; a country under siege, with a well-defined enemy, marshalling all its resources to hang on. Blame the U.S. Imperialists for the tough conditions – but we can take it! For a small nation to stand up to the combined might of the world’s superpower, a few sacrifices are necessary, but at least we are free.

Of course, the North Koreans are still largely ignorant of life in the outside world. But it’s hard not to have a grudging respect for the “live free or die” mentality, even if it’s based on lies.

The cult of personality

In the West, we like to make fun of the cult of personality surrounding the Great Leader Kim Il Sung and the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. The reality was probably even more bizarre than this mockery would suggest.

North Koreans take their leaders very seriously – every citizen over the age of 15 constantly sports a pin depicting Kim Il Sung on their left breast, no matter what they are wearing. Almost every room one enters, save the bathrooms, sports the portraits of the leaders, and of course Pyongyang sports a 20m-high statue of Kim Il Sung. The monument itself is dwarfed by the eternal President’s mausoleum, which dwarfs the Vatican in scale and in piety. The leaders are everywhere, and reverence of them is by all accounts entirely sincere. It’s hard to imagine that every citizen is able to suspend disbelief all the time that their leaders are towering geniuses about every aspect of human endeavour, but I was told by several knowledgable outsiders that the topic was entirely out of bounds for humour or skepticism. Just as you would not expect to find a Saudi stand-up comedian specialising in Mohammed gags, to too are the Kims off the menu.

One highlights of the tour, and a great illustration of this, was the Museum of Metro construction. Pyongyang has a small and rather shabby metro system, but a glorious museum dedicated to how the wise and glorious leaders directed every aspect of its construction. Unfortunately no photos were allowed inside, but that’s a topic I want to cover in more detail later.

Much more to come. A big thanks to Koryo Tours for making the experience possible.