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Nicole Finnemann couldn't pass on trip to North Korea
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Wednesday, 09 July 2008
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Devon Holstad
Summer Writer
For most people in Forest Lake, North Korea is more than just half a world away; it is a radically different shift in culture, cuisine, atmosphere, and everything else that is classified as normal in the Midwestern U.S.
But Nicole Finnemann, a Forest Lake native who currently lives and works in Washington, D.C., recently experienced the trip of her lifetime to North Korea.
Finnemann works in D.C. as the Director for Academic Affairs and Research for the Korea Economics Institute, and when the opportunity to go to North Korea came, she jumped at the chance.
“Opportunities to go to North Korea rarely surface,” she said, and “I had the lucky fortune of being [my boss’] sole accompanier for the trip.”
The trip took them to Pyongyang from April 22-26.
Her boss, current president of the KEI and retired Army Colonel Ambassador Charles (Jack) Pritchard, served in both Presidents Clinton’s and Bush Sr.’s administrations as the White House Special Envoy to North Korea.
“He has 12 plus years of experience in dealing with North Korean decision makers, and has been at the negotiation table with Kim Jung Il himself,” explained Finnemann. She said it was helpful to be with someone who had the experience of Pritchard, because, “in a culture where relationship building is of paramount importance, someone whom [the North Korean decision makers] know and have dealt with for over 12 years is someone they can talk to.”
Their goals
Pritchard and Finnemann had many goals while in Korea. Their main intent was to “meet with officials from the Foreign Ministry to discuss the current status of the U.S.-DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) bilateral relations as well as the Six Party process and nuclear disarmament; to gain a better understanding of the prospects and process for foreign investment in the North (e.g., joint ventures between foreign companies and the North Korean government); and to better gauge—through first-hand experience—life today both in and around Pyongyang.”
Speaking of her own desires for the trip, Finnemann said that, “a significant amount of my own personal interest lay in that last official goal.”
Because North Korea is an exclusive state, planning a trip such as the one Finnemann and Pritchard went on is an extremely complicated process, such as the fact that the North Korean Foreign Ministry must approve the trip schedule. After all was said and done, Finnemann and Pritchard were able to meet with many North Korean officials, including the Director General for American Affairs Ambassador Li Gun, Vice Minister and North Korean representative to the Six Party Talks Kim Gye Gwan, and the new Foreign Minister, Pak Hui Chun.
Finnemann observed that the North Korean officials “repeatedly conveyed” three things: “The North Koreans increasingly approve of the Bush administration’s new approach to negotiations with the North;” that “They are ‘dissatisfied’ with the perceived lack of conciliatory gestures and hard-line rhetoric from the South, which, as a fellow Asian culture, ‘should know better’ than to belittle and talk down to the DPRK with phrases such as ‘opening,’ ‘3000’ (dollars per capita income), etc.; and “they continued to be ‘displeased’ with Japan’s role in the entire Six Party process.”
Observations
Aside from the meetings, the KEI pair also went on a number of cultural visits around the city.
Finnemann’s reaction was that it was “a city of poverty hiding behind a coat of paint,” but Pritchard noted there were many visible improvements from the time he first visited the area in 1996.
For Finnemann, the North Korea trip “was truly the furthest place from Forest Lake I have ever been as well as the strongest push outside of my comfort zone (even after living in South Korea, Sicily and Ecuador and spending lots of time in greater Latin America, Europe and Southeast Asia) that I have ever expected.”
Her outlook after the trip is optimistic, and she hopes that the trip was an educational experience for others as well as her.
She said, “There is an alarming difference between how well the North Koreans understand, and have done their homework on, others with whom they deal and how very little “we” understand about “them.” This trip was a small attempt to address that discrepancy.”
Finnemann is the daughter of Mark and Diane Finnemann of Forest Lake.
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