North Korea in Singapore: 1971 vs. 2018
By Lee Sun-ho
The Singapore summit between U.S. President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on June 12, 2018, reminds me of some happenings regarding North Korea I experienced in Singapore 47 years ago.
When I worked for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) headquartered in Manila, I was assigned to the assistant proceedings officer for the 4th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the ADB convened at the International Convention Centre of Singapore during April 15 to 17, 1971. I arrived in Singapore for the first time, a couple of days ahead of the opening day for a gala function.
At that time, average Singaporeans understood Korea as the north and the south. A taxi driver, on the way to my destination, told me, “This is your consular office. Would you like to drop by?” I was astonished that the driver indicated the North Korean Consulate Office where an exceptionally-large portrait of head Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather was posted on the whole upper side of the building. The ROK's diplomatic status was then just a trade mission, much inferior to the consulate level.
Another happening was more hilarious. Singapore authorities officially published the host country's information guidebook for all participants from the 42 member countries and other international entities at the annual meeting. One day ahead of the opening day when those booklets would be distributed to a thousand of meeting delegates, observers and guests, I happened to find a critical mistake on the page listing all addresses and telephone numbers of member country diplomatic corps stationed in Singapore. Local information on the ROK's trade mission was misguided as that of the Consulate of DPRK, which was not a member country of the ADB.
As a reconnaissance officer of an international financial institution, I confirmed the wrong numbers by calling the DPRK's Consulate. Then, I confidently asked the Singapore government officials to correct this misprinting. They embarrassingly acknowledged their mistakes. However, there was no time to publish the guidebook again. As an alternative, I suggested they reprint the wrong portion only, cut it into the same size, and paste it on each of the pre-published booklets. Quite a group of Singaporean officials were mobilized for this printing-cutting-pasting works overnight. The following-day distribution of the misprinted booklets was dramatically avoided by my own fact finding on site.
During the bygone 47 years, Singapore, the symbol of a neat and clean city, has been constantly evolving.
After the unprecedented summit, Singapore's MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) tourism has been flourishing.
I hope the stepping-stone summit of the 21st century at Capella Hotel on Sentosa Island truly works as “the prelude to peace.”
Lee Sun-ho (kexim2@unitel.co.kr) is an ombudsman columnist for The Korea Times in Seoul.