Conversations with the Patriot

The Patriot is a composite character crafted from Erich Weingartner’s quarter century experience interacting with North Koreans.

As will be obvious to all Koreans, the Patriot’s name, Pak Kim Li, is also fictional: a combination of the three most popular family names in Korea.

Conversation #1		In which the author is compelled by his fictional North Korean colleague, Pak Kim Li, to review the parameters of the interviews he intends to conduct.
Conversation #2		In which Erich Weingartner discusses different versions of truth with North Korean patriot Pak Kim Li.
Conversation #3		In which Erich Weingartner and Pak Kim Li discuss the 2008 New Year’s Joint Editorial, the DPRK’s annual statement of projected government policies.
Conversation #4		In which Erich Weingartner questions Pak Kim Li about religious liberty in the DPRK.
Conversation #5		In which Pak Kim Li reluctantly answers Erich Weingartner’s questions regarding the visit of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to Pyongyang in February 2008.
Conversation #6		In which Pak Kim Li and Erich Weingartner discuss who is to blame for the stalled 6-Party Talks in the fall of US election year 2008.
Conversation #7		In which Erich Weingartner challenges Pak Kim Li about the apparent contradiction between the DPRK’s request for technical and development assistance and the Juche ideology of self-reliance.
Conversation #8		In which Pak Kim Li addresses causes and consequences of the current food shortages, including a peculiar take on its relationship to the nuclear issue.
Conversation #9		In which CanKor editor Erich Weingartner elicits information from Pak Kim Li about the “re-education camps” that DPRK diplomats are required to attend after extended absences from the home country on overseas assignments.
Conversation #10		Which begins with a North Korean take on the election of US President-elect Barack Obama, then morphs into a discussion of the relative merits of Western and DPRK styles of democracy. (21 November 2008.)
Conversation #11		In which CanKor editor Erich Weingartner plumbs Pak Kim Li’s abiding faith in the DPRK workers’ paradise.
Conversation #12		In which Weingartner challenges Pak’s claim that his faith in the Juche idea qualifies him as an atheist.
Conversation #13		In which CanKor editor Erich Weingartner probes the private motivations of loyal servants of the DPRK system that keep them locked into defending regime survival whatever the cost.