Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, is a far cry from the bleak, grey fortress envisioned by most Westerners. Streets are lined not just with pro-party slogans but with trees; bright green and blue paint adorn the walls of countless apartment blocks. It might not be an ideal travel destination for the average Canadian, but in March of 2016, I found myself in a Beijing hotel going through the pre-Pyongyang checklist as I prepared for my third trip to the secluded city. Visa? Check. Bags packed? Check. Reading materials deemed acceptable by North Korean customs? Check. Non-political podcasts for when state TV broadcasts don’t quite do it for me? Check. I was good to go, time to check out and start my journey.
Often voted the world’s worst airline (although I would raise several ‘budget’ airlines as strong contenders), Air Koryo was not an option for us this trip. Joining me was my father, my colleague Gordon, and a ragtag group of Canadian, American, and European beer league hockey players set to take on the North Korean (DPRK) men’s national ice hockey team on home ice. With all the skates, sticks, and gear accompanying us, baggage allowances meant we would spend 24 hours on stingy train mattresses, breaking only to transfer to a connecting train in the Chinese border city of Dandong. If a foreigner in North Korea is an odd sight, 20 foreigners carrying ice hockey equipment at the Pyongyang Train Station must have been quite the spectacle. As we waited for local passengers to unload their goods, our young, charismatic guides would emerge onto the platform and take us to the iconic Koryo Hotel, conveniently located just a short drive from the station. There would be no late-night team drinks tonight, we were downright exhausted.
A lot had changed since my first trip here just a few years prior. Entire streets of skyscrapers had appeared, many lined with solar panels on every flat. The once empty roads were now packed with cars, and as I peered out the window I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a traffic jam forming. Even in North Korea, it seemed, consumerism was on the rise. Yet, as we pulled out from the hotel the following morning in an old, white minivan, the stunning skyline and changing cityscape was far from my mind – I was gripped by fear. It was not a fear of being detained, or worse, as one might expect. Rather, my fear was of failure. This brief journey through the heart of Pyongyang marked the culmination of months of negotiations with stakeholders both inside and outside the secretive communist country. While the hockey players were off to their first on-ice practice with the North Korean men’s national team, we were headed to the Korean Rehabilitation Center for Children with Disabilities. Our goal – to start sports programs for children with intellectual disabilities (ID) in the country.
As one might imagine, the Western world is highly skeptical of any effort to engage with North Korea. Now that we were in Pyongyang, the seeds of doubt sown by the relentless objections of my detractors had borne fruit, and I began to second-guess myself. Was I just naïve to think a young college graduate could effectively engage with North Korea? Would there even be children at the center, and if so, would any of them have a disability? I had pushed quite hard for this; the prospect of turning back empty-handed seemed devastating and humiliating. The moment of truth was just around the corner.
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In a direct challenge to my preconceived notions, the biggest barrier we faced getting to this point was not the North Korean authorities – it was public perception. Obtaining the support of North Korean officials turned out to be almost unnervingly easy. We had already been in touch with them for some time discussing plans for our hockey series, so we simply sent a detailed proposal, by email, and sat back and waited. After several months concern grew about whether our request was still being considered, but eventually, a message appeared in our inbox. Never ones to elaborate, the response from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could best be characterized as “sure”. Despite the vagueness leading to more questions than answers, we accepted that we likely wouldn’t learn more until we landed in Pyongyang, and this presented a problem. Our team needed the support of the wider disability community to get the project off the ground. Without the assistance of disability experts, equipment donations, and financial support for our travel, the project would soon fizzle out regardless of what happened in Pyongyang. Many of those we approached had little experience internationally, let alone a deep understanding of the complex political situation on the peninsula. Nonetheless, there I was in their office, a young, bearded college grad with an ambitious proposal and a few brief emails to offer as proof of capability.
The routine would go something like this: I’d arrive, we’d exchange the usual pleasantries, and then I’d make my pitch. After a lengthy silence, usually accompanied by a perplexed stare, most would express their support for my efforts – in principle. From there, responses would fit neatly into three distinct groups. The first group, comprising the majority of respondents, would express the utmost confidence in their belief that North Korea would refuse. “They’re conning you,” it was claimed, “you will be told that the country has no individuals with an intellectual disability and return unsuccessful.” A similar form of response was that our presence would be allowed merely to showcase “fake” programs, which would then be dismantled on our departure.
The second group, generally consisting of upper-management figures in NGOs and corporate groups, while accepting that success was possible, tended to focus on the risks. Regardless of their personal opinions, they feared backlash from their clients or financial supporters if their involvement with North Korea became public knowledge. The most risk-averse of the group would often cite the prospect of my detention inside North Korea as a big sticking point. In the end, few headlines would get CEOs in a panic quicker than “employee detained in North Korea.”
Lastly come the visionaries, bold-thinkers who recognized the risk but understood the potential value in the project. These individuals, while few and far between, never waivered in their support. When offered the chance to make a meaningful difference in North Korea, they placed their support in me and my colleague. Over the course of a few months, we eventually gathered a sufficient group of supporters to begin making formal arrangements with the North Korean authorities.
As a group, we had discussed our expectations and agreed to keep them modest for our first trip as a formal project. In our minds, simply visiting with kids with an intellectual disability would be a ground-breaking success. News stories and reports frequently painted North Koreans with a disability as severely marginalized, even banned from the capital Pyongyang. Expats who had previously called the city home had privately told us that they had never seen an individual with a disability in their time in the country. Consequently, it was our view that if the authorities granted us access to people with intellectual disabilities, it must follow that they are open to wider cooperation in the future.
Given the scarcity of information and the general tone of media portrayals of North Korea, the skepticism I faced was entirely rational. Yet my assertions that success was possible weren’t unfounded. After a decade spent traveling and working in regions ranging from East Africa to South Asia, I’d discovered a world far greyer than black and white. Descriptions of places found in travel guides, blogs, academic papers, media, and security reports rarely captured the complexity of what I found on the ground. Over time, I learned that lived experience was critical to the development of a nuanced understanding. There are some things that just can’t be learned in a library.
As a student of international law and relations, I had long been fascinated by the hermetic state that appeared ever so frequently in my textbooks. Unlike most countries that arose in discussions, Google failed to provide me with much information about what life was like for North Koreans. Most ‘commentators’ seemed content to highlight sensational stories of approved haircuts, condemn weapons programs, and lament human rights abuses. Few portrayed North Koreans in a light that was anyway human. As an almost perfect metaphor for the availability of information about ordinary life, Google’s famed ‘Street View’ website – despite allowing users to scope out Everest’s base camp and trek through Antarctica – can produce only a few still photographs in North Korea, most of which consist of monuments. Understanding that my experience would be highly controlled, I set out on a quest for knowledge in the form of a tour.
Acknowledging that my experience would be limited, I didn’t expect to learn much on a government-operated trip through the capital city. Re-watching episodes of ‘Vice Guide to North Korea’ on the flight to Beijing led me to drastically lower my expectations and raise my guard. I prepared myself for heartless guides, ‘bugged’ hotel rooms and restaurants filled with food but absent of diners. “Imagine the Truman Show was run by the CIA, that’s what you signed up for a tour of” one friend bluntly proclaimed over beers prior to my departure.
As we made our way from the airport to our hotel, our guides pulled over at the Arch de Triumph – an iconic Pyongyang landmark. Upon stepping out of the van, I cautiously raised my camera and asked if pictures were allowed. “Of course”, the guide replied as she laughed, her tone implying my questions were silly. “As long as there is no military in the shot, you can take any picture, if there is military, you must ask first” she explained, “if there are any other times when pictures are not permitted we will let you know.” Suddenly, Vice correspondents filming ‘discreetly’, constantly reminding the viewers of the ever-present dangers of doing so seemed like fear-mongering. Their trip itinerary was strikingly similar to mine, it seemed inconceivable that our experience could be so different. In one particularly memorable scene, the lead correspondent, referring to a local guide at a tourist site, claimed eerily that the lady likely hadn’t seen any foreigners in “9 months”. Well, off to my right was a group of tourists from China, and I’d seen other groups of foreigners at the airport. Given the limited number of tourist attractions available to foreign visitors, it seemed likely that the local guide referenced in the Vice reporting had seen some earlier that day. For the first time, I began to question the accuracy of reporting on the country, and I had only been there 30 minutes.
Much to my amazement, that initial trip changed my perspective on North Korea and the world at large. I learned how much I don’t know, and how little the Western world in general knows. In an attempt to fill the endless demand for information, journalists have, at times, relied on questionable or unverifiable sources. Others, understanding the power of clickbait, sensationalize anecdotes and propaganda broadcasts, projecting them onto the population as a whole in the process. The result has been the dehumanization of ordinary North Koreans in the eyes of the Western populace. Prior to my trip, when I pictured North Koreans, as irrational as it sounds in hindsight, I saw a robotic, emotionless population. When I arrived, I saw parents walking their children to school, people made jokes I found genuinely funny, and a father told me stories of his rebellious teenagers. At the risk of sounding cliché, I realized just how similar they were to me. Yet even ordinary tasks still filled me with curiosity. How do people pay for their tickets to ride the bus? Do they get ticket rations from the state or do they earn a salary and pay with that? If so, how much does it cost? Can you buy a monthly pass? Despite the vast cultural divide between China and the West, I had far fewer questions when I visited Beijing. Any questions I did have were quickly answered by Google.
Determined for more, I scoured the internet intent on leveraging my law degree for the chance to visit North Korea as more than a tourist. Having previous experience in the NGO field, my first aim was to find a permanent job stationed in the country. Unfortunately, all I could find was a small handful of NGOs engaging with North Korea, most with a very limited presence of foreign workers on the ground. Surely more experienced aid workers would beat me to any of the occasional job postings, so I kept looking. I would eventually come across a small, Singapore-based NGO called the Choson Exchange who run entrepreneurial workshops in the country’s newly-established Special Economic Zones. At the time, entrepreneurial workshops in North Korea sounded like an oxymoron. It is a communist country after all. Yet, what I found once again changed my perspective in a major way. My workshops took place at the Ujung Park Special Economic Zone in Pyongsong, a major trading hub near Pyongyang. There, an almost excessively optimistic group of entrepreneurs listened closely as I explained the current sanctions regimes in place, including the reasons for them. They, in turn, told me stories of success in the local markets, including that of a department store chain one entrepreneur had established in Pyongyang which I was later able to visit.
My favorite show at the time was Dragons Den, for American readers, it’s the Canadian Shark Tank. Entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to wealthy individuals, who may or may not invest. To assess the workshop participants’ ability to think like an entrepreneur, I had them split into groups to create a product and pitch it to me. The winning team would receive my investment in the form of a bottle of wine I picked up in the hotel lobby. After about 30 minutes of heated debates, interrupted only by intermittent laughter, we convened for the pitches. My reluctance to invest my wine in the entrepreneurs never once came down to passion, knowledge of basic business practices, or the ability to crunch the numbers. Rather, most concerns emanated from the youthful nature of the investment infrastructure. Few could answer how they would report back to me on my investment, or to whom I would go in the case of a dispute. In fact, few seemed to have previously considered the questions in depth; the idea of foreign investment in North Korea was new to them as well. When posed with these new questions, entrepreneurs didn’t shy away. They tried to be creative and consider solutions. It made me wonder, are there more aspects of society in which the DPRK is open to reform? If so, has anybody asked what they are?
It was on the trip back to my hotel when we passed the Pyongyang Ice Arena that my journey inside North Korea truly got started. If the idea of a North Korean entrepreneur was mind-blowing, a North Korean hockey team seemed ridiculous. Always one to ask anyway, I put the question to a local official. “Do you guys play hockey?” Sure enough, they had been playing hockey for decades, boasting both a men’s and women’s national team that compete internationally. In my mind, this presented an opportunity. If through hockey I could create a space that’s free from politics and friendly in nature, according to my logic, then maybe I could identify common ground on which we could introduce projects aimed at improving the wellbeing of ‘ordinary’ North Koreans. Along with my colleague Gordon, I began the lengthy process of organizing an ice hockey exchange to be held in Pyongyang with the aim of creating dialogue and building trust. My father has spent the last 40 years in various capacities with Special Olympics, making similar programs a great starting point for our efforts. After a while, the relationships developed in the process of organizing our hockey series had begun to bear fruit. So once again, we posed a question. “Does the DPRK have sports programs catering to individuals with intellectual disabilities, and if not, is there interest in starting them?” The answers – “no, but yes!” A few months later, we were on the rickety old train riding through the Korean countryside to Pyongyang.
Finding a full team of hockey players to take part in what we call the Pyongyang Ice Hockey League had been far from an easy task. We had no advertising budget and few connections in the hockey world. Having first reached out to junior hockey clubs in BC and receiving a resounding “no thanks”, we changed our tactics to target adventurous individual hockey enthusiasts. I spent countless hours online tracking down contact details for every beer league team I could find. Chances are, if you play for a beer league team and posted your details online, you got an email from me at some point. An initial group of more than 60 interested players slowly whittled down to 17 as reports of nuclear tests and missile launches began to make headlines. Those that remained were confident that they could “absolutely destroy” any North Korean hockey squad – most of us were Canadian after all. “Are we allowed to score?”, they would ask, “what if we win, is that cool?” The truth is, nobody had a clue what the skill level would be, all we knew was that they had a team. We simply made it clear – “bring your ‘A-game because we are in it to win it!”
When learning of our efforts, most people ask the same three questions. First, posed with a healthy dose of skepticism, comes “why?” This is followed soon after by two more why’s; “why sports?”, and “why now?”? All three can be answered with the same two words, but before I do, I want to highlight a story I discovered during my research. Little is known about the frequency by which similar stories have occurred – officials aren’t keen to acknowledge them. However, it was far from isolated. A doctor involved in the case recalled four similar instances at his hospital in the previous five years. The story is that of a child born with an intellectual disability to parents unwilling to raise a boy they referred to as a “mongoloid.” Nobody cared enough to give him a name, so we will call him Joe. Joe was born with, in addition to an intellectual disability, an intestinal blockage that prevented him from properly digesting food. A routine and simple surgery could have saved his life, but the decision to act rested solely on his parents. Perhaps they feared the social stigma and pain Joe might face as he grows, or maybe the prospect of caring for a child with a disability seemed overwhelming to the young couple. Maybe they felt the supports offered by the state were insufficient. Whatever the reason, Joe’s parents opted out. When asked about their decision, they replied “why burden society with a mongoloid child?”
Doctors chose not to request permission from the state to intervene on Joe’s behalf. Unwilling to take active steps to end Joe’s life, hospital staff wheeled his bed into a secluded section of the hospital and stopped his feeding. As time passed, staff continued with their work, fully aware of the child dying in their midst. Though many expressed discomfort, none intervened. Joe died two weeks later, alone, hungry, and forgotten. “That was an awfully long time.” the lead doctor remarked, “It was a long and agonizing wait. I tried not to look at the baby, and when I did, I didn’t want to touch it.” Doctors later recalled feeling disgusted as the father would routinely check-in to ask, “how are things?”
Readers might be shocked to learn that Joe wasn’t North Korean, he was American. He died in John Hopkins Hospital. The year – 1971. Things have changed a lot in the Western world since then, not least the public’s attitudes towards individuals with intellectual disabilities. The mean age at death for somebody with Down syndrome – one of many conditions that can result in an intellectual disability – had risen from just nine years in the 1920s to 56 by the 1990s. Yet more can be done, remaining discrepancies between the mean age at death for someone with an intellectual disability and the general population are largely due to lifestyle concerns and a failure of public health systems to adequately meet the population’s needs.
In addition to reduced lifespans, individuals with ID in Canada are more likely than the general population to express feelings of isolation, be the victims of sexual violence, be obese, eat less nutritious diets, be hospitalized more frequently, be placed on multiple medications concurrently to deal with behavioral issues, have undiagnosed medical conditions observed at routine screenings, struggle with mental health concerns and more; all problems that could be addressed if the plight of individuals with an intellectual disability were made a priority in public discourse. Yet, few in the wider public even know a problem exists.
As I sat down to write this piece, lawmakers in Ohio passed legislation banning abortions on the grounds of the child having Down syndrome. Clearly, a substantial proportion of the population still feels that a life with Down syndrome is less valuable than a life without. Acclaimed evolutionary biologist and ‘thought leader’ Richard Dawkins once went so far as to tweet that mothers carrying an unborn child with the condition had a moral obligation to “abort and try again.” It is assumed that the logic goes as follows – a child with Down syndrome will inevitably live a life of hardship and suffering, and will not be able to contribute to the community in a meaningful way. Therefore, it is cruel to bring that child into the world. Perhaps if Mr. Dawkins visited the Special Olympics World Championships he would understand that a life of suffering is not a pre-determined result of Down syndrome; it’s merely projected onto individuals by a society that fails to be fully inclusive and responsive to their needs. The evidence is clear, when society fully invests in children with an intellectual disability, they will grow into healthy, happy, and capable adults. Some may hold jobs, others will get married, all will make meaningful contributions to the lives of those they encounter. Despite more than 100 years of sustained activism, Canada and the Western world at large still have a long journey to the achievement of health and social equity.
Today, North Korea lies at the heart of a nuclear crisis that has captured the world’s attention. Missile launches, military training exercises, and political rhetoric have left many on edge. To the general populace, engaging on the issue of disability at a time such as this comes across as reckless. If the Korean authorities are open to programs now, surely the offer will remain in “a few years when the tension dies down”, or so the logic goes. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning fails to fully consider the history of the Korean Peninsula, one in which a period free from tension is the exception, not the norm. From the date of founding of North Korea in 1948, incidents of heightened tension have occurred on an almost annual basis. This includes a series of border skirmishes between 1966 and 1969 in which 43 Americans and 229 South Koreans lost their lives. Later came the infamous ‘axe murder incident’ in which two American servicemen died in 1976. More recently, tensions skyrocketed following the shelling of Yeonpyeong and the sinking of the South Korean Cheonan vessel in 2010. Had my infamous trip past the ice rink occurred in 1948, and we were to demand peace as a precondition, we would have lost 70 years. In that time, the mean age at death in the West for individuals with Down syndrome increased by more than 40 years.
***
“No filming!” barked an official as we reached our destination. The center for disability sat next to military barracks – a sensitive site in the eyes of authorities. If I was falling victim to an orchestrated plot of deception akin to the Truman Show, this struck me as an odd choice of venue. An older Korean lady dressed in nurses’ attire enthusiastically greeted us on the front porch, “welcome, come this way”. We were guided through the cold, unlit halls before abruptly stopping at a classroom. The door opened. Inside were more than a dozen children with intellectual disabilities alongside a dedicated team of caregivers. On the walls were bright stickers of animals, the floors littered with toys. Barring the portraits of leaders hanging above the door, it could have been anywhere in the world. The burden had been lifted – we had proved that North Korea was willing to engage on the issue of disability. Our trip was a success.
Our programs were designed to cater to children with an intellectual disability, so we had to adapt our plans slightly when children with sight and hearing difficulties showed up as well. The more the merrier we figured! As we knew we would primarily be working with young children, rather than developing sport-specific skills, our workshops focussed on more general skills like hand-eye coordination. All three foreigners present in the room expressed the same thought on departure – “those were just parents and caregivers who wanted the best for their kids.” We had all watched as they showed genuine excitement the first time a child swung a baseball bat and made contact with the ball. We saw them rush in to help whenever a child was struggling, each time using a gentle and caring tone. Once again, I’d seen the human side of North Korea, and once again, I found it shocking. This wasn’t supposed to exist after all, at least not according to the mainstream narrative.
I had hoped to head back to the Pyongyang Ice Arena that night to play in the first full game between my new beer league teammates and the North Korean squad, but our workshops had been going so well we didn’t want to leave. As darkness fell, we packed our things up and headed for dinner with our local guides before returning to the hotel to check-in with the players. Part of me had secretly been a bit nervous about using hockey to build relations; it’s a sport that’s synonymous with fighting and a small slip-up could easily make a few enemies. That’s why I was thoroughly relieved as two players came bounding towards me as I entered the hotel lobby, smiles beaming off their faces. The game had gone to overtime, and a large, enthusiastic crowd came to check it out. They’d lost in the end, but nobody cared. What mattered was that they had shared a meaningful experience with ordinary North Koreans. To them, that was priceless.
After a night of beers and karaoke to celebrate their game, my teammates headed south to the DMZ for a morning tour while we sat down for meetings with local sport and disability officials. Once again, I would feel like I could have been anywhere in the world. Officials were calm, respectful, and most importantly, caring. Despite having had very little, if any, previous interactions with people with intellectual disabilities, they took our words to heart and spoke openly and pragmatically about how we could proceed. One such official, who would later join us at a workshop, would remark, “when I’m here, I have the same feeling I get when I visit an orphanage.” The experience had moved him to the point where on our departure from Korea, he would ask if he could be a coach once programs were established.
Once the meetings had finished, it was time for me to show my skills on the ice rink. Growing up in Canada, I had played a few years of minor hockey, but it had been a long time since I’d laced up the skates. I took to the ice for the warmup and after a few shaky strides, fell majestically to the ice, knocking the net off in the process. “Do your skates up tighter”, chirped a Canadian player as he skated past me. When I stood up, it became very clear that I was in for a rough ride. At the other end of the ice was a full North Korean squad, and they were far more skilled than I could have possibly imagined. One shift turned to three, and as the periods passed, I slowly gained my confidence back and it all started to set in – I was playing ice hockey in North Korea.
As a solid third-liner on the ‘C’ team growing up, I had never dreamed that I would get the chance to score against a country’s national sports team. To me, it was like becoming an astronaut – possible in theory, but with my resume, it would take a miracle. This was my Disney moment; the only problem was that the North Korean skaters were way faster than me. So, I did the only thing I knew how. I parked myself in front of the net and waited for the puck to come my way. With just a few minutes left in the final game, an American defenceman sent a slap shot billowing towards the goalie, it hit him in the chest, dropped to the ice, and sat motionless between his pads. Helped by a shove from a North Korean defenceman, I fell forward, nudging the puck over the line with my stick in the process. To my right stood the referee, pointing into the net to signal the goal was good. It was glorious. I had just scored against the North Korean Men’s National hockey team. In Pyongyang!
After autograph sessions and jersey swaps over a few beers, international and Korean players said their goodbyes and took selfies together. Our week was drawing to a close. Soon, we would be back at the Pyongyang Train Station, hockey bags in hand, preparing for the long journey back to Beijing.
****
I recently attended a conference in Ottawa for advocates and practitioners working with people with intellectual disabilities and was surprised to learn that, myself excluded, almost all participants were parents of a child with an intellectual disability. They represented grassroots organizations from across the country. Some work to support independent living arrangements, others provide sexual education training, but all are leaders. Canada isn’t where we are today because of any innate aspect of our political system. We’re here because of the thousands of parents who didn’t see a child with a disability, but a child with unique capabilities and unlimited potential. Around the world, Special Olympics has used sports to unlock this potential and inspire parents to advocate for their children. In 2009, Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt broke the world record for the 100m sprint, coming in at an amazing 9.58 seconds. At the 2015 Special Olympic World Summer Games, Agnes Lekaleka of Malawi took home the gold medal in the women’s 100m with a time of 14.14 seconds. In Newfoundland, the all-time record for deadlift is held by a Special Olympic athlete. Surprised?
When considering the incredible achievements of Special Olympics athletes, I can’t help but think of Joe. Today, most readers upon learning of a child starving to death in a local hospital would be outraged. Many would immediately call the police. Some might take matters into their own hands and head out to search for the child. It seems inconceivable, in 2018, that people would do nothing. Yet, in 1971, that’s what happened. It’s tempting to place the blame solely on bad parents and weak public institutions, but that would be an oversimplification. For no one to intervene, Joe’s parent’s contention that his life had no value was at a minimum, acceptable to society at large. When they stated that he would be a burden on society, no one pushed back. No one told stories of inspiring athletic or professional accomplishments of people with intellectual disabilities. The unrivaled love and affection offered by a child with an intellectual disability was never raised as a counterpoint to their rejection. All anyone saw was a problem; the disagreement was simply about how to handle the burden. I wonder, what if Joe’s parents saw Agnes Lekaleka cross the finish line in record time? Or what if they witnessed the multiple standing ovations received by Special Olympics athlete Matthew Williams as he gave a flawless Ted Talk in front of thousands of listeners? Maybe then they would have seen Joe’s potential. If they did, he would be 47 today. Who knows what he would have achieved? To those still wondering why? Why now? And why sports? The answer – for Joe.
As the international community increasingly seeks to isolate North Korea, the human cost of our actions must be ever-present in our minds. The ratcheting up of sanctions has had the unintended consequence of preventing meaningful engagement and humanitarian action from realizing its full potential. Social and political pressure on us to cease operations will undoubtedly increase over the coming months and years, but we won’t, provided the North Korean authorities remain open to improving the lives of its citizens with intellectual disabilities. A country in which the needs of individuals with intellectual disabilities are sufficiently met has yet to be achieved in human history. Therefore, my hand remains outstretched to any community willing to work towards one, including North Korea.
