Monthly Archives: April 2013

Ice cream in Singapore, coffee in Pyongyang

Posted on April 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

(Saturday profile in Today newspaper, April 20, 2013)

By Tom Benner

The United States and South Korea are on high alert over North Korea’s nuclear threats. But far from the frenzied actions of officialdom grappling with the situation, a group founded by young Singaporean professionals has been quietly making inroads and building bridges with their peers in North Korea.

The Choson Exchange, a Singapore-registered non-profit, has for the last three years regularly sent volunteers to Pyongyang and Rason, and more recently brought North Koreans to Singapore, seeking to connect young people and institutions in North Korea with workshops and training in economic policy and international business and finance.

“What really surprised me was how they seemed like any other normal young people,” Choson Exchange volunteer Desmond Lim said of a trip that brought five young North Koreans to Singapore last year for month-long internships.

“The girls really liked ice cream, so I was taking them to Ben & Jerry’s and Cold Stone. They would have double scoops and triple scoops. The girls liked to shop, the guys didn’t.” Continue reading …

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Boston, terror, and unfinished business

Posted on April 16, 2013 | 1 comment

By Tom Benner

Sept. 11, 2001, was going to be crazy day for me, no matter what. Yesterday’s horror at the Boston Marathon brought me back to that time, and reminds me of the unfinished business of that day.

At the time I normally went to work at the press gallery of the Massachusetts State House, where I served as bureau chief for a daily newspaper. But on Sept. 11, I was scheduled to go to the paper’s main newsroom, where I was filling in for the vacationing editorial page editor.

Then, that evening, I would shift back into reporter’s mode and cover that day’s primary election to nominate a replacement for a recently deceased congressman from Boston. The election results wouldn’t come in until 10 pm or later, so it was going to be a long day.

I remember looking in the bedroom mirror, tying my tie and about to step out for my drive to the newsroom, when a radio reporter with scant information said something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. This was 10 minutes or so before 9 am, it had just happened, and there was no way to gauge the enormity of what was to come. Continue reading →

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Aircraft carrier diplomacy

Posted on April 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

StennisPhoto

Singapore’s importance in the US “Asia pivot” – or “rebalancing,” as some in foreign policy prefer to call it – is underscored this week by two visits: Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s meetings in Washington with President Obama and Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel, and the docking of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis at Singapore’s Changi Naval Base.

The cordial meeting between Obama and Lee at the White House marks strong military ties and cooperation between the two nations, with new rotational deployments of US Navy vessels – as many as four littoral combat ships — in Singapore starting later this month, as the US looks to boost its Asia-Pacific presence. Littoral combat ships are surface vessels designed to operate in shallow waters close to shore, according to a US Embassy media release.

Hagel, hosting PM Lee at the Pentagon, discussed issues including tensions in the South China Sea, and accepted an invitation to speak in Singapore at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, which is held May 31 to June 2. Secretary of State John Kerry with visit Northeast Asia next week, amid tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Meanwhile, at Changi Naval Base, visitors over the past few days got to board the USS Stennis, which performs something of a showboat/PR function when it isn’t seeing action (the Stennis launched the final sorties which brought the Iraq War to a close in 2011, and recently completed a five-month tour providing air support to allied troops on the ground in Afghanistan.). As a colleague described it, the carrier is like something out of Top Gun, the size of four football fields, and carries 6,500 crew and airmen at maximum capacity, and 70-plus aircraft. The floating military base leaves Singapore today for Hawaii before heading to its home port in Washington State.

Secretary Kerry and PM Lee make remarks in this newly released video on YouTube.

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